I read Julia’s Chocolates by Cathy Lamb. It has a wonderful opening line, “I left my wedding dress hanging in a tree somewhere in North Dakota.” The story takes the character to Oregon where she has the normal chick lit life changes. I kept wondering, what happened to the dress?! She only mentioned it in passing. So, I wrote a poem about it. In the poem, I’m showing how, when you do something completely source for yourself, it ripples out to others in a way you could never have imagined.
Have you thought about how you remember or how your memories are stored/retrieved? I found out recently that I have (store? retrieve?) observer memory. Most people have field memory. With field memory, if you recall an incident, the viewpoint is as if you/your eyes are a camera. As someone with observer memory, I see myself as if from a third-person point-of-view. I can see my whole body.
Now, I just assumed everyone’s memories looked like this. Researchers must have assumed this as well, since identifying these different memory types is relatively new. I found out when I asked my niece (PhD candidate in Psychology at OSU) for a term I had heard in passing (observer memory), but I thought this was just what psychologists called this third-person phenomenon for everyone. I polled my sisters, brother and several other random people around me. All of them have field memory. Who knows why mine is different? Not me.
Memory is notoriously fallible and completely point-of-view based. As a culture we have a disconnect, we trust our own memory and, therefore, give significant weight to eye-witness testimony. Cops, however, don’t give it a lot of value.
Here’s a link to a compilation of scholarly docs: http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/PointofView.html
Poetiosity is a word I made up. I spent a little time coming up with a name for this blog. Certainly, I want a name that has some staying power and one that I won’t be trying to change two years from now like a morning-after tatoo. So, we have Poetiosity — a concatenated word using the words poet and curiosity. Curiosity is my superpower. Poetics I’m working on.
Creating words from scratch has a real word: logodaedaly. Not, as some think, sesquipedalian (just someone who likes big words).
Poetiosity 