Re: [-empyre-] Accidents (was for example)

[Yvonne Martinsson <yvonne@freewheelin.nu>]

> From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 04:06:22 -0800
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: RE: [-empyre-] Accidents (was for example)
> 
> I'm trying to lead you down the garden path, Yvonne.

Are you trying to (un)deceive me, Jim? Are you taking on the role of the
trickster present in almost every mythology as the one who causes
accidents/the accidental? Great role to play, I'd say.

Seriously, I'm not a neurologist. I don't know how the brain retrieves and
stores information except that it creates mnemonic tracks in the brain (left
or right?). But there's more to the picture, isn't it?

For instance, memory is selective. Certain things we split off -
information, experiences etc. that don't fit in to our world view or our
view of ourselves are easily dismissed. What's not interesting we also
discard. 

Memory also play tricks on us and return by metaphorical condensation - two
or more disparate memories condensed into one new - or by metonymical
displacement  as a partial object associated to the real memory. Information
that has been split off, stored and repressed may return and haunt us, they
can cause us physical pain and psychosomatic symptoms, they can make the
body jubilate.  

We got a brain, yes, but that brain is part of our bodies and memories can
be stored anywhere in the body. This goes in particular for very early
memories, before there's a language to pick them up and process them
'properly' (whatever that is).

  yvonne