The Vagaries of Memory

Yesterday, an email from "Book Millionaire Real" appeared in my Gmail inbox. I was about to delete it as spam when the heading and first words caught my eye: "Book Millionaire Update - Dear Clive, Thank you for yo..." It looked as though it might be legitimate. A brief internal debate followed before I decided to open it. And here's the text:

Dear Clive,

Thank you for your interest in Book Millionaire Reality TV Show. The application deadline has passed as of July 31, 2005. We gave last week for any applications postmarked by July 31 to make it into our offices.

On Tuesday, August 9, we finished the filming of another TV series which is now in post production. Many of the team members of that television series are also involved in Book Millionaire.

With the other show completed and off their production schedule, we will continue the process of working through applications.

The amount of talent and creativity and great stories, WOW, it’s inspiring and incredible. These applications certainly speak well of authors and soon-to-be authors. I have found that the most successful and happy authors are those who are the kindest and most creative. And I can tell by the applications I’ve looked through so far, we have a group of highly creative and good hearted people with important stories with which they want to help people.

As we go through the applications, because they are all so good, we may need to reach out to you and others in the Book Millionaire Community for your votes and opinions.

Right now, I’m working my way through applications. I will share more shortly.

Lori Prokop

Executive Producer and TV Host

Book Millionaire Reality TV Show

Airing Nationally Fall 2005

www.bookmillionaire.com

Vague memories stirred. I recalled coming across details of this show and knew I had downloaded the application form. But I could not, and still cannot, recall whether I actually applied. The email would seem to indicate that I did but that may be misleading; on reading the only other letter to do with Book Millionaire that Gmail could find, I saw that I had also signed up for their newsletter. This could be the first of them.

So I may or may not be entered for the show. I suppose time will give me the answer to that one. But this does illustrate very clearly what a fickle beast my memory is. I have reason to believe, too, that I'm not the only one to suffer occasional strange effects emanating from the memory department. A couple of days ago Wayne, of Rag & Bone Shop, posted an excellent article entitled Math, Moth and I quote from it here:

One night, riding home and feeling resentful of the debauchery I had missed, I saw a gypsy moth fall from a streetlight. It spiraled, hit the asphalt, and writhed back and forth across the yellow lines in the road. I stopped pedaling and coasted, and between the clicking spokes of the wheel I could hear the moth’s wings slapping the pavement. It’s been nearly two decades since that night, and often I’ve replayed the scene in my mind: the disorientation of flight, the mangled wings, the painted specks of gravel that materialized from the blur of pavement when I looked down. A moment arrested in memory. But it’s been at least a decade since I thought of Mrs. Pooler, or Rachel Meeropol, or Andy Curto - I haven’t thought of them at all until this afternoon, when my mind turned them up, for no good reason, while I was waiting for a light to turn green.

Where are they all now, these people? It doesn’t matter. Give me a week, and I’ll have forgotten them again.

How odd is memory in its choice of materials. For twenty years it will haunt Wayne's mind with a dying moth in the road, yet will not store for me the potentially important completion of an application form that might be a path to wealth and fame.

I had this to say in response to Wayne's post:

Memory is a strange thing, especially a child’s memory, in what it chooses to keep or otherwise discard. I have this theory that memory is like a filing system with limited capacity and we are forced to select what can be stored and what must hit the waste bin. In later years, when space is becoming cramped, we have to throw out old files to make room for the new and it may be that, in going through these old files to select those no longer needed, we come upon such things as you have written of here. For a moment our eyes glaze over as we relive those times of long ago and recall the feelings they evoke. Then, with a shrug, the file is bundled together again and tossed towards the bin...

I think I may have inadvertently thrown out the Book Millionaire file to make room for something else!