Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Last week, on consoling a friend over the death of her husband, Salvador Dali haunted me. Expressing surprise over the recent illness and passing, I exclaimed, “I didn’t realize he’d been so sick; why, I just saw him a few months ago!”
Actually, I hadn’t. Make that well over a year. And spoken to him? About two or three.
Dali, in his signature 1931 painting “The Persistence of Memory,” depicts a surreal desert landscape littered with strange objects and melting pocket watches. In it, he seems to suggest an impertinent quality of time, one that shows no regard for our failings and weaknesses. Setting aside clinical memory loss, or savant-like memory achievement, the manner in which we recall people, places and things remains perplexing.
Experience plays a vital role, since recollections are connected to what stage of life we’re in. This affects how far removed the subject might be from our current sense of self. For example, a college student probably recalls the fun from his high school prom more vividly than a retiree. Yet the older man might better appreciate — or exaggerate — the lifelong effect of not asking one girl over another.
Given this, several factors seem to distort time. One is the object of our remembrance: How impressive is the past event? Another is our emotional involvement at the time of origin. In Dali’s terms, an episode arousing little passion wouldn’t melt many watches.
Yet when a situation stirs us, the human mind, armed with imagination, can warp memory. While this defense mechanism occasionally happens instantly, often it develops over longer periods. In the latter, we create entire mythologies of the past to the extent that, with no malice intended, reality escapes us.
Such fables aren’t always born in old age. A high school buddy of mine was fond of mentioning his late older brother, who had been killed in Vietnam. A few decades later, he admitted such a person never existed. As a much younger boy, he lived next door to a family whose son had died in a car accident. My friend had wanted an older brother so badly he proceeded to adopt one: his dead neighbor.
Over the years he added elaborate aspects to the tale, such as the war twist. By the time he moved into adulthood the true memory vanished; his imagination had composed personal history with a wishful storyline. It took family intervention and intense therapy to erase it. Then he experienced a long mourning period to concede the absence of the sibling he so craved.
This type of engagement begs for interpretation, both from the arts and sciences. Aristotle, for one, wrote extensively on memory and reminiscence. He acknowledged the power of remembrance on dreams, the mind’s eye, and on all connections to the present tense.
In that same vein, British novelist Julian Barnes also tackled the subject in his 2011 Booker Prize-winning work, “The Sense of an Ending.” His protagonist recounts a first-person narrative from youth to retirement, but then upsets the memory cart at story’s end. Readers must turn back to earlier chapters to see if their own recall failed them, or if Barnes had woven an under layer of reality before their unsuspecting eyes.
Last week, I felt the same after expressing condolences to my friend, when realizing how much time had passed since I’d seen and spoken to her husband. I walked away feeling guilty it had been so long, troubled that I didn’t remember until too late, and sad I wouldn’t get another chance.
Maybe I should’ve just sent a sympathy card to keep the myth intact. Sort of like trying to look at my wrist watch, only to find it melting.
