Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Memory

As you arrive at the house you visit regularly you notice that it has an aroma. Not unpleasant exactly, simply distinct. A sort of cooking smells plus lived-inness. If it was your house you'd want it gone.

Thing is, if it was your house you wouldn't notice it. If a smell stays in the memory for long enough the memory ignores it and seeks out further olfactory wonder.

Taste is the same. Chances are, if you are the sort of person who is willing as an experiment to chew a piece of gum until the flavour has completely gone and then place the used gum somewhere safe and sanitary, when you come back to it (give it an hour or so) there will have been a miracle and the flavour will have returned. Trust me. Your chewing gum doesn't lose it's flavour on the bed post overnight.

So, what other situations are stuck in your memory as not causing any harm, but are? And what seems to you to have lost its flavour but in fact still works?

Not an advent thought. Just a bonus thought for good behaviour.

1 comment:

RHK said...

Lonnie Donegan! The memories.

Don't know about the flavour thing.

I love the thing the brain does with things like crossword puzzles. One has got as far as one can possibly manage by bedtime - and numerous clues remain unsolved.

You pick the paper up over breakfast the next morning. Boing. You solve several clues in a matter of moments.

Some kind of involuntary processing has been going on while you slept.

I guess that's why 'sleep on it' is such good advice.