July 24, 2003

  • I remembered this morning that I had forgotten something very important from a while ago: a request from someone (who?) for something (what?). I was haunted by this because I knew that if I didn't remember, this person's request would go unattended and that would be very, very bad.

    So I concentrated amidst a torrent of extraneous noise that suddenly seemed to surround me (when you're trying to remember as hard as I was, even a pin's drop sounds like a sonic boom). Suddenly (English for Eureka!), I remembered! (The particulars of which are so boring I won't even mention.) I had nearly given up hope, but remembered! And I was so impressed by my own prowess at recall that I started thinking: Damn, I have a great memory!

    However, after a while's reflection, I started to think that I wouldn't have needed such a great memory for remembrance if I just had a great mind to collect it all and hold it ready to begin with. In other words, having a great deep recall memory (where you can dig to churn things up) may be indicative of a mind that's too puny to hold it all at once. Maybe Einstein had no such memory at all but merely kept his swirling universes of thought ever present in his mind like a PC with infinite RAM and no hard drive: always current, ever-recombining, explosively evolving.

    Hence, here's a pop-up thought: the greatest minds may have little or no offline memory.  And those with the greatest offline memories may be compensating for a miniscule ready access mind. You can just forget those with neither…hmm…forget?…what?

    …never mind.

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