The Art of Memory When we can traverse the plains of memory, stopping at each fire to warm ourselves before we start again on our journey, there is a world inside a world that keeps going on to infinity. If we are lucky enough to hear the eternal melody that is at work in these moments, many fine hours may come upon us. But sometimes the solace and hospitality are too much and we live with our new found companions, taking them along wherever we go, as a shadow upon our eyes. The memories of Thoreau, or the early frontier narratives of Indian captivity, are something that I have felt eternal and unchangeable in human nature, not for any piece of information they have given me, but because my melancholy has always found peace in their environment. For some the world is old or the world is new, but the point is that we tend to look at it through memory. One memorable event confounds all future celebrations; we remember so as not to forget, but we do not remember that we are able t
What is imagined is always different from what is seen. Reality, in this sense, has a way of being mutually common; it remains a part of what we construe and a part of what actually happens. Fools may find wisdom in the wise, but the wise are never found in foolish wisdom. Diogenes in his tub, or hermits in their caves, are only a part of what we imagine ourselves to be, but their real person was actually every breath and every movement that we are right now. The only difference is that imagination has more variables, thus able to portray the fantasy under a form of reality. It is like taking a picture of a mountain, then believing the picture a more truthful portrayal than the moment we were on the mountain. To see and to imagine is only to be, but the moment we accept either one as real is the moment we see ourselves in foolish wisdom. Douglas Thornton