Losing Memories

The terrifying thing about losing memories was not the loss of things in the actual past but the reality that things in the present would be gone if not recorded. No one can record actual histories except with their minds in what’s called a memory. A memory can truly record an event like a historical document cannot, like a photograph cannot, like a vial of somebody’s extinct perfume absolutely cannot. Only a memory itself can be, essentially, a memory. Everything else is like a poem about leaves. Stupid. The nice thing about poems about leaves is that they can be written down and filed and at a later date they can be accessed in their entirety. Meanwhile Babe cannot accurately remember the layout of her large college town, even though she only graduated four years ago. Things of the past fill her with fear. In college no one ever had a car. She could remember that. Thing of the past filled her with fear.