i recently read an interesting article on time and the pandemic. many people feel time slipping away from them without a trace. the article ventured the thought: without memories, our lives empty. we create time when we create memories. tough to do locked in your house with an uniterrupted flow of magazines, television, bickering with your kids. oddly, memories created by change, anxiety through contact with other people, failures in the world. nothing risked, nothing gained.
and this set me to thinking: if i don't keep making memories, i get obsessed by old ones, and that can feel like death, ie. life over, everything passed. how do i escape this, sitting in my tower, waiting for lightning. (last night it didn't reach me, all the thunder in the distance to the east). if i didn't get a fire, at least i got a magnificent rainbow. is that enough? i have been watching movies by two film-makers who stir my thoughts and emotions: woody allen and ingmar bergmann.
i started with woody, not just for the laughs, but for the career. it gave me lots to think about. (do thoughts create memories? can they do it on their own? i doubt it.) i found myself moving and talking like his main character. i put a new voice in my head to drown out the negative voices often obsessing me. replacement may be one way of dislodging old memories. i become someone else. not all his movies worked this way. the early ones too much slapstick and shtick. long ago i though Bananas funny. now it seemed labored. and one i thought awful in the past, stardust memories i now think his best.
as for bergmann, i'm again obsessed with his carrer. once i watched almost everything he made. now i have to pick and choose, avoiding the silly comedies or the really grim ones like hour of the wolf and shame, searching for the positive in smiles of a summer night and wild strawberries. when i was very little, four years old, a member of my father's congregation owned the local movie theater. i could walk in and watch them anytime i wanted, which i did. i remember sitting in the aisle and watching the prince and the pauper. essentially, they created my identity and watching films now, i put myself back in time.
are these new memories or merely visits to old ones? can i look back the next day and still feel i've experienced time? maybe not. last winter i spent two and a half months in mexico. during travel i don't get depressed, so many new scenes and people, museums and art, crowded together, i'm full of change and the unexpected. i don't sit around wishing i were somewhere else, which can be the knife in the heart of solitude.
travel a bit like high school where my memories dominated by the anxieties of changing hormones, trying to fit in, embarrassment at school dances, fights before class, constant change and the unmanageable. memories most created when life out of my control. true, i ache to have everything under control. like most people i crave security. alas, the security of the zoo and prison not very satisfying. i only experience an accumulation of being through change.
