venerdì 15 maggio 2015

Memories.

Memories. They crowd my mind, they choke it, wanting to be seen, insistent. Sometimes so sad that they make you cry. Most are happy, to prove how good Life was with me. Choosing among them would mean to deny a part of the past, and to admit mistakes. «Let him who is without sin cast the first stone» said someone, wisest of all. «Errare humanum est», wrote Seneca. So we accept being small human beings, with the limits of daily learning, trying to learn from every experience ; if it’s bad, we try not to repeat it, if it’s good, we count it as a blessing. The night (night for you, morning for me), a time for sleep, becomes an occasion for reminiscing the past. Not dreams, but real memories of past times, often so precise and detailed that they transform the passing of time as we know it into a simple detail, insignificant compared to the freshness and immediacy of those memories. If I think about the lack of memory bothering me when I was studying, I feel like smiling. I thought getting old meant becoming stupid and confused. I came to the conclusion that the disease is good for my memory (who knows what bombs are administered to me through the catshit I’m fed) or that, passing most of the night (while you snore) without many thoughts, I prefer to hide in the oblivion of memories rather than crying over my destiny. Descartes’ «cogito, ergo sum» (sorry about the philosophical quotes in Latin, thanks to a great philosophy teacher in high school) becomes my battle cry in this dramatic situation that I insist on considering temporary. Who could adopt this sentence better than me ? Can a body having lost all movement influence a still lucid mind ? Some days ago I explained to a friend, whose sister has been diagnosed with my same disease, that we should consider ourselves lucky not to be in the opposite situation. Having a perfectly functioning body but an atrophied brain, incapable of expressing ideas and holding memories, would mean ceasing to exist. In my mind I let you travel by me, imagine Les Demoiselles d’Avignon without having ever been to MoMa, I sniff rice with sausage made by my friend Alberto without going to Casteldario (you who can still eat, make that 14 km drive, you don’t know what you’re missing), I hear the waves crashing on Holetown beach north of Barbados, drinking a piña colada… Do you need me to draw it for you or do you understand that I’m lucky ANYWAY ?

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