Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play

Leonard Cohen – Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen may have been talking about something a bit more lusty and sensual, but memory and memories are the playground where a lot of us go to work and play …. and sometimes ache.

When surrounded by my peers – mostly around my age +/- 10 years – almost without exception, they occasionally complain and worry about memory loss:

• loss of individual words on the tip of their tongues.

• loss of short term “what did I do yesterday” stuff (or my personal favourite: where are my keys/glasses).

• loss of long ago activities that can jumble things together so that a ten year time span feels like only one day in retrospect.

And they worry…

Memories long and troubled…

memories short and sweet …. memories lie inside us as a novel or a tweet

What was I saying? oh yes… Memory. My fading memory…

But, know what? I’m not worried about it… yet…

I don’t want to discount dementias and Alzheimer’s, and the terrible brain pathologies that truly only know the arithmetic of subtraction.

No, today I’m talking about the everyday person which likely includes you and me.

I’m not an expert in the area of memory… it’s not profound thinking here today but light verse… I merely have an opinion based on my own personal observations, which is not very scientific of this guy who spent years in a white lab coat (Larry, were the arms wrapped and tied on this white coat?).

Here’s something silly… It’s astounding the memories that stay with us at the top of the heap; the minor inconsequential vs. the momentous and life-shattering.

I clearly remember my Mom’s chocolate chip cookies from the 1960’s. We all know that chocolate chip cookies are crack cocaine to kids, right?

I see them, I smell them, I share them with my little friends.

In retrospect, they weren’t fantastic cookies (certainly not as good as the ones my wife makes today!)… but I can only believe that I remember this so well because they were a symbol of what she meant to me… after all, what is more comforting in life than a mother’s love and warm, chocolate chip cookies?

Here’s my take on memory slippage, you decide if I’m on track or not: The arithmetic and multiplication effect of aging, and the sheer volume of memories is flabbergasting.

Each added day, month, and year of our lives piles another layer of images and words and deeds… layer upon layer upon layer.

Plus, the world is more complex today with the inclusion of exponentially growing volumes of internet-based data, some of which we attempt to absorb.

Finally, on top of this, realize that our language is evolving, so much so, that the Oxford English Dictionary, on average, adds more than a thousand new words to the lexicon every single year. OMG, where are my glasses?

Bottom line folks: our heads, our brains, our “hard drives” (again, not to be confused with Leonard Cohen’s lyric lines above) are more and more overloaded with “stuff”.

I can’t worry about the little things I forget… I can only try to stay afloat and find small coping methods and tools to trick myself so I appear organized and coherent.

Two small fixes for me? 1.Reading glasses everywhere. I have at least 10 sets of inexpensive reading glasses strategically placed in rooms around the house and in the car. 2.Thank goodness for lists… every day I prepare a list or schedule to keep me focused and on track… I would be dead meat without my index of activities…

Lady Gaga might say of me:

I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I’ll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us
We’re far from the shallow now

Yup, I’m far from the Shallow, but I’m treading water in this memory pool. Grab your water wings and join me?

……………

OK… another small guitar instrumental I put together this week. Welcome to a slightly countrified Silent Night.