Memory and time.

Last week we played the best game ever! It was a pictionary type game. I've played a similar game online on omgpop.com and it's called "Draw my thing." Basically, it's the same thing, but you draw things on the computer...with a mouse/tablet. Laptop track pads fail miserably.

On Monday, we talked about the reading we had for over the weekend. Overall, it wasn’t too tough a read. For me, memory has always been something intriguing to me.

One thing that stood out to me was how we can alter our memories. For example, the article mentioned King Henry IV who believed he was a present at a battle he never attended because he kept telling himself he did, and thus his mind constructed a false memory. This is somewhat terrifying to me- what if I’ve made everything up? What if my entire life is a lie? How do I know for sure? This is why I shouldn’t be allowed to read articles like this.

The worm section kind of freaked me out, and made me sincerely hope no one ever does that to humans. I don’t think all animals can be categorized like that though. I like to believe that my cat knows who I am beyond scent and daily habit.

The whole animal part sparked an interesting discussion in class. Is it merely chemical with animals, or is there something more? I think that animals can store memories, but can’t associate them the same ways humans can, and cannot pull them out on a whim.

We also watched the movie Memento, well started to watch it. I was very confused at the beginning, but now I am dying to see how all of it began! I do think it’s interesting how we’re experiencing the movie almost like he is, and we have to put the links and facts together, just like he does. It makes is a more active experience.

At the beginning of class, we were asked to draw “How we got here.” [I’ll scan in my drawing later]

When I heard this assignment, I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret this- how we got to the classroom itself or how we came to be in the world. It was very interesting to see everyone’s response. Some people drew maps of the campus or their foot trails from where they were before this class. Other people started with where they were born, one person drew a more abstract sense of being and another person even started with “how we got here” is a concept of time, but what sort of time? Is it physical time, learning over a period of time or certain experiences that make up our past. I made the center of my diagram a tropical place because I was born in a tropical area, and there were three paths branching out. One contained all of the schools that I attended since elementary school, the second path had my interests since I was a little kid, and how I grew to be interested in art. The third path had the actually path that I took from my dorm room.

I love thinking about the concept of time. What happens when someone has Alzheimer’s? What happens to their sense of time? Or people with memory problems?

This reminds me of my friend. She suffers from seizures and had brain surgery, and how her memory is warped. She can’t remember things from the past 20 minutes, at least not in detail, and gets the past mixed up. Memory is a weird thing indeed.