Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Meme Me, Baby

Memory

 Remember when you had one?  Before the crucial cortical sheath began shrinking ... the hippocampus started behaving like a slow-moving hippopotamus ... vague nostalgia for memories you have to assume you once had, but can't for the life of you recall.

Never Mind.

Remember when the world sort of made sense?
Uh ... not really.  Unless ... you mean ..?

Remember when cigarettes weren't bad for you?
I can't even remember when you weren't bad for me.

Remember when you had hair?
Did I ...  Oh yeah ... no, wait ...

Remember that song?  How did it go?
Can you hum it for me?
Sorry, but I'm not falling for that one again.

Remember when you weren't a total dick?
I used to be a pussy, but I guess I outgrew it.

Remember the days of blissful innocence before the 2nd law of Thermodynamics went mainstream?
Shit!  Maybe if everything wasn't falling apart before my eyes ... I ...

Remember when identity wasn't completely unidentifiable?

You used to be a person, so what happened?
I think I was the victim of a crime ... or it may have been a disease ... something conceptual ... probably.

Vocabulary was the first casualty. 
So what are you now?
I'll take a stab and refer to myself as a holographic projection of few words.
A strong silent illusion.
And yet so real even my own family members can't tell the difference.

***

In certain parts of the world, the amygdala is frequently mistaken for an armadillo,  is hunted and consumed as an important source of emotional sustenance.

I don't know what it is ... I just don't feel like myself.

It has been hypothesized that the meme is a living entity, lodged in the brain, capable of mutation.
I call my meme Mimi.
I'd marry Mimi if I could.
This, then, is an example of the power of a culture to exert control over a hapless, memory-impaired population.

I woke up one day and didn't know where I was. Turned out I'd been living in a foreign country for the past twenty years.
I went to a doctor who diagnosed a long-term state of dissociative fugue.
I wandered out of his office without paying.