Where Do Your Memories Happen?
On knowing that you won't care later
Do you ever think about where you are when you imagine your memories? I mean, where in your memories you are.
There are those old memories tied very much to specific places. My house growing up or my best friend’s house, the gym of our parish church, Flemington’s Main Street. You never forget those places; it’s like your brain has a perfect copy of them stored away. Maybe that’s why so many people experience change in the built environment as some kind of assault or affront; because these places no longer exist in the real world, and the “real” one in your brain is no longer up to date. No longer a map of a thing that exists.
There are other memories, though, that seem to follow wherever I’m living. Since we’ve moved into our new house and been here for almost two years, I realized a funny thing. I don’t quite remember what grabbing the mail or taking out the garbage was like, or what working in the old kitchen or sitting at the old table was like. Or how exactly the cats inhabited the old space (they used to roam the condo, because it was small and single-story and there was nowhere to put them away at night; now they go to the pretty large finished basement at night, except occasional nights when I treat them to the whole house all alone. I do still say to them, don’t throw a party and invite any unknown cats! I guess I’m practicing my dad jokes.)
When I think of some meal we had in the old condo, or just some everyday thing like that, I noticed that I imagine it taking place in our new house. I suppose, back in the condo, I’d probably done the same thing with my grad school apartment—although maybe that was distinct enough to remember in detail. (I do remember taking out the trash—I loved to stick the garbage bag on the door of the trash chute, and then do a Street Fighter kick and send it flying down. I’m sure whoever’s wall bordered the trash room didn’t love it.)
Isn’t that interesting, though, how so many habits and memories sort of transfer to wherever you are? Maybe it’s a way to not miss things; you almost forget they existed, your brain adapts to wherever you are now and projects it back into the past.
You know what else it makes me think of? This, from a piece I wrote here titled “If You Build It, They Won’t Care.” This is the sort of converse point to the one about change in the built environment feeling like it’s taking away some part of yourself.