My constipated Brain

    There is this trick I do in High School where I would browse thru the pages of a magazine then I'd ask somebody to pick a page. I would then describe the randomly picked page. It's not a word for word thing though, I would only point out, for example, that there is a picture of a girl on the right side of the page or that there is a soft drink ad on the left and so forth. It required no effort at all. Sometimes I could see the "pages" in my mind and I could even "flip" thru them to get to the one I need. It was more of a visual thing-- I could only recall the pictures and I forget them after a day or two. I could not recall text. Well, sometimes I can but not every time. It was a hit-and-miss.

    If there's one thing that can be said about the study of the human brain -- and especially in the field of memory -- it's that even today, it's notable less for what is known than for how much is not known. The workings of our brain remain, for the most part, a mystery. But if there are areas of consensus in the field of neurology, one of them is that the notion of "photographic memory," in which a person can take mental snapshots and recall every detail at a later time, has never been proved to exist. Scientists say it could be a version of "eidetic memory," which is, essentially, the medical term for crazy, crazy freakish recall.

    Am I making this up? Fat chance. My schoolmates would have figured it out on day one. It's something everybody talks about every time we have class reunions. Photographic memory or not one thing is for sure. Whatever it is it had served me well in school and in my profession as well. I had a leg up when examinations week comes up. And for the longest time I did not carry a datebook but remembered all my appointments. It was all good until I hit middle age. By that time I have been accumulating memories since I was maybe two or three years old. I should say that it isn't as if I have a day to day recording of everything that happened in my life. I only retain life events that made an impact on me and only those I personally experienced. Like there's this piece of memory that I vividly recall waking up a day after a flood and seeing millions (no, not really millions, but there was a lot) of hito on the yard of our host in Legaspi City. It's fragmented and I can't really connect it to other events but I do recall all the people I interacted with on that particular day. But as memories piled up-- the good as well as the bad, the ability for recall became more of a curse rather than a blessing. When an entire life is perpetually available, that life exists, in a sense, forever in present tense. And sifting through a perpetual and onrushing flood of memories is less fun than it sounds. It's hard, after all, to erase bad memories when you can't erase any memory at all.

    And that's the rub, I suspect that all these years I may have been suffering from depression stemming from the inability to forget unpleasant memories and experiences from the past. Particularly memories that had caused me so much pain. I think that this thing is likely the result of obsessive-compulsive thoughts rather than "photographic memory". I'll leave it to the experts. As far as I'm concerned I look forward to old age and the day I, hopefully, will be able to forget most if not unload all these "bad" memories that have clogged up my constipated brain all these years.