Think outside the Fox
Not all South Carolinians are DeMinted
Best signs I saw at the rally. The rally will hold me together for awhile. I’m not going to discuss how I feel about the results now. It’s obvious. On the good side my city will be getting public buses. I read that only people on welfare who are parasites need public transportation. Love being categorized so wrongly!!!
Memory is funny. It’s highly selective. 90% perception; 90% pictures and films; 90% discussion with relatives and friends you have always known; 90% discussion with friends and family you make once away from the nuclear family–and these memories get thrown into the shuffle; five percent absolute truth; five percent absolute falsehoods; five percent kernel of truth. Yes I know this is way over 100% but what in life is a 100%?
I was born in the middle of the 20th century and live in 2010. It feels absolutely incredible to be part of the biggest revolution in telecommunications since? I’m not really sure.
You in your 20’s now, maybe 30’s and definitely younger will always know where your former classmates and friends are. You might not speak to somebody who used to be very important to you for years, but one day you’ll IM or Skype or whatever.Then again you might know exactly who you want to keep in your life from the time you graduate college. I hope you leave room for the unexpected and the wondrous.
I don’t know if this change in communications and the youtubing of everything will allow you to remember with more clarity and precision or your memories will be selective also. Only time, a zillion studies, and you yourself will be able to answer those questions.
I became an Internet junkie far earlier than most members of my generation. But I quickly established contact with some people who had been important to my life since my late teens and we had just fallen out of contact for a few years. Yet this new way of communicating–email, allowed us to be more honest than we had been previously. Or maybe it was being on the cusp of middle age and being a bit sentimental. We wanted people to know how much they had meant to us.
Through the years I reestablished contact with many people. No matter how slow the contact came it always felt a bit abrupt. By establishing this contact we wield our story to another person. I learned what people really thought of me at various times and each time was blown away.
Last week something amazing happened.
When I was four I made my first best friend. I don’t remember meeting her. We must have picked each other as there were many girls around our age in the garden apartment we lived in.
We were friends who could spend hours just lying on the grass staring at the sky and telling each other stories. We made up games. We read books. Did she come to the court barbecues where kernels of corn would fall all around me as I was messy? I think her family was away all summer; not just six weeks for camp as my sister and I were.
She set the bar high for all future friendships.
And I realize that many of my memories aren’t false but aren’t exactly the way things happened. So much bad happened in my own head, for I was struggling from the time we were nine or so with NLD, that I didn’t see the good around me.
I’m not changing my memoir for it is my perception but I’m adding chapters. I have been toying for some time with having somebody who knew me during a specific period write an intro or a bit more to a chapter. Yes I would wield space to them.
It is abrupt; this feeling that I wasn’t as strange as I believed I was. But I can get used to it. Lord can I get used to it!
The evidence that you are a baby boomer is how much you can fit into 100%.
@Doug
I stand by my numbers 🙂 Memory is subjective and thus percentages can reach the bazillions!
Again, you’ve shown me more of Pia the person, not the blogger. I like getting to know you through this process of your book. Well, that and our emails and FB messages. You’ve got a way with words that is expressive and that I truly appreciate.
(You might notice you moved from 11 to 15 at 3WW; you posted last week’s entry and I put up this one.)
Just goes to prove that the perception of ourselves isn’t necessarily universal. I think most of us are too harsh on ourselves. Love the idea of having a friend write the intro to the chapters!
“And I realize that many of my memories aren’t false but aren’t exactly the way things happened” That is a uber cool truth.
My grandmother went to her class reunion a couple of weeks ago. 60th class reunion up in New England. She has not been in touch with these people in fifty years. She found some old friends on classmates.com. She said about 25 percent of them use the internet, but it is increasing. They had in at noon because the ones who live local and drive prefer not to drive at night they are like 79 years old. I find that fascinating.
I’m afraid for us, something else will have to come along. Knowing where everyone is makes us care less – I think. There will be no rush of recognition after lost time.
You’ve worked another great 3WW from your life
Wow, I think that’s a great idea. Whether they write it or you just talk to them and use what they say. How others perceive us versus how we perceive ourselves is fascinating to me, though not something we always get to truly see.
By the way, your writing lately has just been incredibly clear and concise. I don’t know if it’s because you’re in book mode or what, but it’s excellent.
H Pia,
I think Thom said it all. You begin to show us more of you through each of your writings.
I am really enjoying getting to know Pia…
Good job
Wysteria
hi pia…. a ha! did you say Lord…??!!!! just kidding… couldn’t help it… i love the idea of being kinder to oneself, a more gentle touch to the past… i was trying to think what i remember at 4… yeah, i can remember… also like setting the bar up high for future friendships… there’s something special about having a friend so dear and so young… somehow as we grow older we lose that ability to have such tender friendships…