Memory is a story we tell ourselves.

At the Scott Silvan show, he talked about memory - how we create a truth that we can live with. I found his show fascinating as he kept leading us to his childhood memory that we realise at the end of the show is very different to what we first see.

This article points out that memory isn't a recording device, but a reconstruction.

I've had two recent examples of this, which have made me question my memories. Neither important moments or tainted with complex emotion.

One was at the 1996 Melbourne grand prix. Martin Brundle had a massive crash (an airborne barrel roll) yet managed to run back to the spare car in time and restart the race. We were all cheering and yelling as he ran past, watching the clock and hoping he'd make it to the pits in time. I'd been telling this story for years as it was such an exciting and elating moment. I looked up the footage and discovered he'd not run past our stand. He'd been driven in the safety car to the pitlane and run back from there to the garage. So my memory of him running past us, I realise, we watched on the screen. We all stood and yelled and cheered him on, but on the screen.

I was so surprised when I saw the footage. I still see 'how I remember it' but I know it's wrong.

The other more recent example is about a shared memory where 5 of us remembered it differently. Our Champagne club has been on many lunches and dinners out. After one, we went to a bar in Darling Square where we talked about the robots we could see in XOPP. Fast forward five or so years and we finally went to dinner at XOPP because of the robots. We were discussing the day we were at the bar, and all of us remembered it being after lunch at a different restaurant (except me who wondered why were were even there - I knew it had to be after a lunch but couldn't think of any in the area that made logical sense). One person was right. Most of us didn't even remember going to that restaurant with the group. Some were adamant their incorrect memory was correct. I was astounded that the five of us were at the same event and all five of us remembered in completely differently (all good, happy memories, just the facts were muddled).

It made me realise how fluid our memories are. If these can be so mixed up without any strong emotion or importance attached, imagine what resentment, anger or hurt can do to them? Not to mention the different recall with multiple people bringing their experience and feelings to the 'memory'?

Have you discovered some of your memories weren't as they seemed?

The beautiful reflection pictures are from the new exhibition at White Rabbit. It's free and worth checking out. You can also grab dumplings at the tea house for lunch.

Other posts on Memory: 

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” ― Marcel Proust

Enjoy the moment for what it is

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it. Georges Duhamel

No two children have the same parents.

And even a short fiction here.

Linking with #TrafficJamReboot #TalkaboutitTuesday #WWWhimsy #SeniorSalonPitstop #TheRandom   #FloratFridayFoto #NaturesNotes #GardenAffair And #MySundaySnapshot

"If you love something, wear it all the time." Vivienne Westwood

We have a formal event on the weekend. My go to outfit for this kind of dress code is my wedding dress. The last time I wore it was 2019  and the intervening years of lockdown eating and menopause have not been kind. My bodyshape has changes.

I read somewhere that the ideal weight is the one when you stop worrying about it, so I've tried to think like that (or not think, more accurately) but when I tried on the dress is was very tight and looked curvy in all the wrong places. 

I do have a back up outfit that looks okay, but I think I'll stick with the dress (unless I catch a glint of horror in my husband's eye - he would never say I look terrible straight to my face, but the thought might sneak across his face). I'll try to chanel the confidence of these ladies, and the great lesson I learnt that night becuse the dress is so beautiful and it might just be the last time I get to squeeze into it.

I am hoping the luxury of wearing the dress, it's beauty and the magic of the all the memories woven into it's material is enough to carry me with confidence and more importantly, feel beautiful.

It holds not just the day of our wedding, 24 years ago but a dinner on the Eastern Oriental train on our honeymoon, countless nights of merriment at Mayorall Balls, wearing it to a formal dinner when newly pregnant and smiling at the sheen of the curve in the velvet on my previously flat belly, dancing the night away to great music with at a family wedding, and most recently, wearing it after a long hiatus at another wedding and feeling so very happy it still fit.

I will be sad when it no longer fits, as it's as beautiful as it first was, and timeless in style and looks brand new. 

So wish me luck that I can enjoy the dress on the night. For that is what this dress is made for. To feel beautiful and to party....

“Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them” - Marc Jacobs

Do you have clothes that are special to you?

Linking with    #FineWhatever

No two children have the same parents.

I speak repeatedly of becoming aware of my youngest becoming an only child, as the older two live their adult lives. But I realise now her whole life has been slightly different.

It was highlighted when driving home from the Hunter and we decided to stop for lunch on the beach at Terrigal. "Which beach?" she asked. 

"You know, near Star of the sea"

"Where?"

"The place with the water slide between two pools"

"What?"

"We used to go with Ronny and Rex*"

"Which ones are they?"

(*These are friends kids we have know since birth and gone on many weekends away and week's skiing together - the kids match the older two in age, 2 share a name and a week apart in birth days. I made up the names here to protect the innocent)

After I explain, she replies: 

"No, I don't remember."

And it dawned on me she was probably pretty little the last time we went. Every year we would go away to Terrigal for the weekend and share a very glam apartment in a resort with another family. The kids adored it. Even when we thought they were probably too old for it, they asked to go back and after a few years hiatus, we returned. We must have been there 10 times across 14 years....but of course, she would have been 4 or 5 the last time we went.

I don't know if it's my age and ever increasing nostalgia but I felt sad that all these fabulous memories we worked so hard to make for the kids someone elude the youngest.

It dawned on me, that while I was well aware no two children have the same parents, they don't even have the same family memories. Family memories are my memories. My memories of the kids. The kids might have a different memory completely.

Just makes me more resolved to make sure she has some magical ones of her own.

(On the plus, I had taken her and a friend up to the Hunter for the Snow Time so I guess her fun memories are same but different - I just have to work a bit harder to make them happen. I'm now already scheming to get her and some of her friends up to Star of the Sea for some fun on that waterslide....).

Linking with #FriendshipFriday #WordlessWednesday #BlueMonday 

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” ― Marcel Proust

I'm really interested in memory and the way it works. The recollecting and retelling of the memory actually alters the memory - we smooth out the bits we want to and focus on others until it is more a story than a true detail of events.

I recently learnt of the Collective Imaginary in a course, and they gave the example of how if you ask people to visualise the Civil Rights movement, they will see images of the march on Washington, hoses and protests, Martin Luther King and so on. But ask them to see the Suffragette movement and they draw a blank, even though HALF the population won the right to vote, it spanned decades and it was photographed so there are images. It was big but slips by with little context in our visual memory. Some images are fed to us as iconic and some are not. In the course I did on Gender and Intersectionality on Edx with the University of Iceland, they said 'History is written by the victorious and the powerful; in most cases, men. Women, people of other genders, the weak, the vulnerable, the uneducated*, those without access to the corridors of power -these people are rarely included in the ways in which history is recorded, disseminated, or remembered' and I think that is probably what was in play here. Our historical memory (of events we weren't present at) are curated for us in a narrative that someone shaped as 'important history'.

I wrote of my own surprise at the difference in Collective Imaginary here and here, long before I knew what it was. This week I had another real life example of the fluidity of memory and how we can alter things without realising it. We are watching the Godfather of Harlem at the moment and I keep commenting how the actor playing Malcolm X looks EXACTLY like him. It's uncanny. Last night I decided to google the actor to see what else he'd been in. I discovered he also played Malcolm X in Selma and the penny dropped. I wasn't remembering what the real Malcolm X looked like, I was remembering the last time I saw Malcolm X depicted! I was actually remembering this actor as Malcolm X five years ago...

For the record, he does look a lot like the real Malcolm X too, but not as identical as I thought!

And so it goes with all memories, we shape our narrative, whether we want to or not.

“Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Have you caught your memory playing tricks on you?

*Note uneducated doesn't mean stupid but if you can't write your story down, it's very hard to get it preserved.

Linking with

Enjoy the moment for what it is.

Christmas can be a difficult time for people. It can remind you of what once was but is now lost. Memory is a very deceiving mechanism. We look back fondly on events and people, who at the time, may have actually been troubling.

I was chuffed to see this on Instagram

I said once to someone "Don't let the dust from the past fool you to think it's glitter".  I think our memories glimmer with an enticing sheen, only because there's no way for hard facts to correct it. Our memory is like a Facebook feed - it's photographic highlights of the good bits, or the funny bits - even the terrible events seem to lose some of their danger, from our safe position ensconced in the present.

As I've quoted before "Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire."(John Dewey) 


The only lesson we can learn from this, is to not let comparison spoil the moment. Enjoy the present, untainted by the past or hopes for the future. Now is all we have, and we should try to focus on what is special each day as it happens. No matter how small, how insignificant or how imperfect it may be. These moments are exactly how the best memories are made, even when we don't realise it at the time.


Linking an old post with #Lifethisweek as I don't think we can ever go back and recapture memories. There are places I'd like to visit again and things I'd like to do again but I think I've changed too much to ever recapture a memory.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

For those that aren't familiar with it, the title is a quote by Albert Schweitzer. Memory is not a static thing. Memory can be lost, and found and alters over time. I read recently, that when we remember something, we are actually remembering the last time we remembered it, not the event itself, which is why some memories fade and some stay strong, and they often vary over time.

In We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, she talks about a lot about the nature of memory (and it's changing facets). She says "This doesn't mean that the story isn't true, only that I honestly don't know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it."

She expands on this idea "Language does this to our memories - simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture."

My husband was telling a story from his childhood and his sister asked "Was I there?" (she wasn't) and then pondered "Why do I remember it so clearly then?" It was purely because she'd heard the story so often that her mind had injected her into the picture.

The fluidity of memory is how that terrible trip turns into a fond memory as the repeated telling of the tale for the amusement of others begins to inject the humour of the story on the feelings associated with the event.

Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire. (John Dewey) and this may be a blessing or a curse.

Have you ever had someone tell your story as their own? Do you find the nature of memory fascinating?

Linking up with #BooknificentThursdays