nobody remembers everything. people rely on others for memory. the puter is not the same as memory, it's storage, not memory. it's not like collective memory, init? i forget more than i remember i'm sure more than i may yet come to know, and i forget quickly. trudy lost her memory recently but she remembers things in the distant past. it's hard for her to think now without memory and hard to follow conversations. i know the feeling of feeling blank sometimes and i wonder if it's similar, but i know that i still have memory even when i feel blank, so it's not distressing. well, it is if my memory is called on when i'm blank. some objects are memory aids, or smells, or sounds. sometimes a memory can come unbidden that was sleeping in some quiet fold of one's brain. nobody knows how we remember certain things, or how the mind stores memory. i picture a little brain library with sworled shelves all grey and synapses like tiny electric hairs that might light up when an object or sight or sound or a body calls up the sleeping memory into the present again. something happens to memories while they sleep, like something happens to us when we sleep. maybe we sleep in the folds of our brain library with our memories. maybe many of our memories are really dreams. maybe when we pass from this body we will live in space in a constellation of twinkling memories.