Over the past few days I've been remembering days from my youth in great detail.
I have a feeling this is due to my change in approach to the completed years of my mental calendar. I have images pinned to every day of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Each calendar is complete and unchanging - the past is set in stone, even if memories may be reinterpreted in light of later events. I'm treating these as a landscape I can walk over, finding it familiar and welcoming, rather than a challenging feat of memory to recall each separate image.
These years also have become more significant as, following the death of David Bowie, I am imagining how it would be if I had about 18 months to live. I picked a date in May 2017 - not with the intention of really dying, but imagining that is when my mental calendar ends. This has had quite a profound effect in bringing home that the years of my mental calendar are all I have - even if I don't know how many there are to come.
Trying to kill a mosquito this week, I suddenly remembered being a child on holiday with the family in a caravan and killing blue bottles that had invaded our caravan. My brother and I thought it was hilarious fun, until my mother pointed out we were killing living creatures. For many years, I would then chase flies out the window if I could, rather than swat them. Killing mosquitoes, however, is justifiable homicide (or mosquicide).
This memory is very clear, and probably comes from when I was 11, given the age of my brother in the memory and my recollection it was a particularly hot summer. I have probably not recalled this memory for many years, if at all. But it is as vivid as any of those I have consciously pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags to remember every day that passes.
This recollection triggered many other equally vivid memories of my family, some from even further back. Since then, other memories from the more distant past keep popping into my consciousness.
Of course, I would sometimes remember past memories before I began this process.
This week it seems they are coming to me without effort. This is a side effect I will continue to monitor.
I have a feeling this is due to my change in approach to the completed years of my mental calendar. I have images pinned to every day of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Each calendar is complete and unchanging - the past is set in stone, even if memories may be reinterpreted in light of later events. I'm treating these as a landscape I can walk over, finding it familiar and welcoming, rather than a challenging feat of memory to recall each separate image.
These years also have become more significant as, following the death of David Bowie, I am imagining how it would be if I had about 18 months to live. I picked a date in May 2017 - not with the intention of really dying, but imagining that is when my mental calendar ends. This has had quite a profound effect in bringing home that the years of my mental calendar are all I have - even if I don't know how many there are to come.
Trying to kill a mosquito this week, I suddenly remembered being a child on holiday with the family in a caravan and killing blue bottles that had invaded our caravan. My brother and I thought it was hilarious fun, until my mother pointed out we were killing living creatures. For many years, I would then chase flies out the window if I could, rather than swat them. Killing mosquitoes, however, is justifiable homicide (or mosquicide).
This memory is very clear, and probably comes from when I was 11, given the age of my brother in the memory and my recollection it was a particularly hot summer. I have probably not recalled this memory for many years, if at all. But it is as vivid as any of those I have consciously pinned to my mental calendar as memory tags to remember every day that passes.
This recollection triggered many other equally vivid memories of my family, some from even further back. Since then, other memories from the more distant past keep popping into my consciousness.
Of course, I would sometimes remember past memories before I began this process.
This week it seems they are coming to me without effort. This is a side effect I will continue to monitor.
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