Memory is a curious thing. This trip to the city I grew up until 12 years of old has been fascinating. What I like is not because it has been so long (16 years) but more of the heightened transient experience I got going inside. I don’t think I can have this rare experience again on my next trips.
Everybody, and the brain, is constantly producing new memory and probably shelve the old ones someplace in the multiplex of folds. Memory of sequences and spaces are recorded as well. More relevant to many people are places in the childhood. Some occasionally float through the present. Some come out and reconfigured in dreams. Some are retrieved by external means such as conversations, photographs, and retold stories by others. True? And as a natural biological process, these old memories are then reshelved again. The process continues indefinitely and produces one composite memory of a place, the official version that is reported by our brain to us. Wait, wait, did I just say “reported by our brain to us?” Let’s not wake-up Mr. Descartes. I think I am not I think therefore I might be something else.
So this time, I got to revisit places that have existed in memory for so long, and have gone through so many auto revisions. As I go to places physically, I am also making a parallel neuro-trip in my space/time memory, repatching and fixing the database of images inside. Some places are so familiar but also so unknown at the same time. This amnesiac experience is really surreal.
The most obvious difference is the scale of things and places. The version in the memory is always bigger and more spacious than the revisited realities. One common comment from me is “Wow, the streets are much smaller than I remembered.”
The other interesting moment was when I was lost driving around and stumbled on my grade school building. I parked my car and decided to go in. Fortunately, it was Sunday so no regular school activities and just some extra curriculars. The next thirty minutes of life was the most filmic and Michel Gondryesque experience in my whole life. I passed by the cart vendor with students buying snacks, myriads of good memories and good feelings returned. I continued walking inside slowly going places where the memory led. I went to the playground, watching little me climbing and running around. I went to the boys toilet, just seeing faces and smiles of all of us 20 some years ago queuing in a line to go pee. I went to several classrooms where I used to be. Here, unlike in the US, you only change classroom once a year. The teacher is the one that will come to your class. Therefore, each classroom that I visited is also a container of a very distinct set of memory. Each room has it’s own story of friend, fun, and fear.