cyborg memory
Oct. 1st, 2002 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cpostropheThe conversation had dawdled over to the realm of reminscence and nostalgia as we sat around my living room, talking about parties and trips and excursions, and somewhere in there we got stuck on the timing of one particular event, unsure of the date of when it occurred. We made guesses based on our recollection of apartments, charting the migratory patterns of our friends through the last six years. I made conjectures founded on the memories of post-party experiences, of crashing in a bedroom that I occupied in '98 and remembering the sunrise filtering through unwashed curtains that were too thin to block out the light, and instead diffused it into a golden haze that felt like God's chastisement for another late-night debauch.
But then he settled matters when he pulled out his PalmPilot and started paging back through his calendar. It was 1998, etched right there in liquid crystal, and oh did I remember this one that happened a week later? and this other one? Did I see that entry marked "lunch with Cris at the Shuttle Stop" and did it remind me of standing on a street corner at 2AM outside a pizza dive, giddy and tipsy under streetlights and saying "why, yes, lunch would be an _excellent_ idea."
Why, yes, I did remember all of that, and in that moment I felt a particular regret for never keeping a datebook. I had my brief periods in school, updating a PDA I inherited from work, but I could never keep at it. And now, I wondered what it would be like to have a record of every commitment and every appointment -- a million memories triggered by three taps of a stylus. I briefly thought that it was ironic that I didn't want a datebook to remind me of what I had to do in the future,1 but to help me remember what I did in the past.
1 though, truthfully, I probably could've used something to remind me about getting Interpol tickets before they sold out this week. but then, sometimes missing sold-out shows at the Middle East can be a mixed blessing
But then he settled matters when he pulled out his PalmPilot and started paging back through his calendar. It was 1998, etched right there in liquid crystal, and oh did I remember this one that happened a week later? and this other one? Did I see that entry marked "lunch with Cris at the Shuttle Stop" and did it remind me of standing on a street corner at 2AM outside a pizza dive, giddy and tipsy under streetlights and saying "why, yes, lunch would be an _excellent_ idea."
Why, yes, I did remember all of that, and in that moment I felt a particular regret for never keeping a datebook. I had my brief periods in school, updating a PDA I inherited from work, but I could never keep at it. And now, I wondered what it would be like to have a record of every commitment and every appointment -- a million memories triggered by three taps of a stylus. I briefly thought that it was ironic that I didn't want a datebook to remind me of what I had to do in the future,1 but to help me remember what I did in the past.
1 though, truthfully, I probably could've used something to remind me about getting Interpol tickets before they sold out this week. but then, sometimes missing sold-out shows at the Middle East can be a mixed blessing
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 12:29 pm (UTC)My point being that I always enter events into my calendar and then forget to check periodically, so in my case it just becomes a reminder of lost opportunities.
Not that I ever intended to attend the talk by Ms. Stewart, mind you.
Of course, if I had to coordinate 5 dates on a Friday night, I'm sure I'd find it handy.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 12:37 pm (UTC)In order to miss each one of them, in turn?
Re:
Date: 2002-10-01 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 02:50 pm (UTC)When I kept a paper datebook in college, I had a code system so I could keep track of various private happenings that I wouldn't spell out directly. Soon after college I forgot what everything meant, so now I can look back at a weekend in 1995 and see that I did something involving a black triangle, but that's about it.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-01 08:19 pm (UTC)(hotsynching the damn thing to my computer is part of charging, so no, i don't have backup files)
i do, however, have this silly electronic journal dating from early 2001 on....and i have my even sillier paper journals, which stretch from very late 2000 back to 1988. if nothing else, i suppose this alone makes me a hardcore traveler on memory lane. in another year, i'll have two thirds of who i've been recorded ;)r
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 09:25 am (UTC)I have a small collection of black notebooks that have travel notes, journals, setlists, shopping lists and half-finished reviews. Only problem is that I never dated any of the entries and I have a bad habit of just opening them up to a random page and jotting down whatever came to mind. So nothing is in chronological order, not even the notebooks themselves (as they each took turns being lost) -- so it's a slightly helpful memory jar, at least in so far as reminding me that at some point I had an interest in picking up a particular Shostakovich recording but utterly failing in telling me why.
oh, and the electronic journal is useful, but it's certainly not quite as comprehensive as having every appointment, no matter how significant or mundane, recorded meticulously in a calendar.
no subject
Date: 2002-10-02 09:23 pm (UTC)mundane, recorded meticulously in a calendar.
that's why i save all my personal email :)
and all my ticket stubs. at least the ones i don't lose.
if i ever become in/famous, and then die, and have a biographer....that person will have both a blessing and a curse of information on their hands.