Beachball: a memoring

Last night I did a memoring based on the concept "beachball".

I started to think of a memory from when I was very young - 4 or 5 years old - when I was playing on a beach with my brother at Talmine in northern Scotland and we lost our beachball that drifted into the sea. This was my first experience of "tides", I think, and I can remember finding the concept frightening.

I had to stop this though, as that memory has been revisited several times, in stories by my mother for instance; and I could not separate my memory of the event from recollections of others, and my own re-visions of the event inspired by them.

So I went back to the concept and thought about a particular aspect of a beachball: the small plastic/rubber valve that inflatable objects have. This reminded me of something: and here is where I got a really good memoring.

*****

When I was small, before I could swim, I used to go into the pool with an inflatable ring: it was dark navy blue on one side, and white on the other. I particularly remember the strange sensation of weight it had, and the equally strange hard and flapping quality the rubber had, when it was not inflated. Both of these qualities disappeared when it was blown up and turned into a light, sturdy, but smooth inflated object. As I think of it now, this object was very different to plastic inflatables made today: definitely not see-through; much thicker.

I also have a faint recollection of pride the first time I was allowed to inflate it myself, but this is tinged with a shame I felt because I couldn't manage to keep the air effectively in while I closed the valve; I didn't have the dexterity and envied those who did.

Ways of Memoring

Here are some thoughts about how to do memoring.

1. You must begin with a topic to inspire your memoring and the memoring must relate to that topic.
2. Topics can take virtually any form: for example a particular object; sensation; or activity. Specific types of location are good, as are specific colours or sounds.
3. You should not generate the topic yourself, for example by thinking about something that you'd like to remember. Instead you should find ways to generate topics at random.
4. It is OK to reshape the topic in order to catch hold of a memoring. See for example my post on "beachball".
5. Be wary if your mind drifts towards something that feels "ready" to remember: memorings should be "new" - they are not simple memories that we have thought of several times since the remembered event happened. Sticking rigidly to the topic will help with this.

Some good randomness generators:

• Asking your loved one to give you a memoring topic.
• Choose a number from one to twenty then select that number (eg the twentieth) noun in a book nearby on a shelf
• Go to the homepage of a good newspaper website and look select a topic word from one of the headlines

Good times that I have found to do memoring:

• lying in bed in the dark.
• When I need a break from a particularly dull mental task
• While walking to and or from work

REMEMBER that memorings aren't meant to be "big" or important things: the best memorings will be of objects that quickly outlived their usefulness; inconsequential events; or relate to people that quickly entered and passed from your life.

What is memoring?

We all have some memories from our past that we consistently turn to. Many of these will be quite small things, like a game we used to play, or a particular bedspread we loved. Other times we'll have a memory that takes a bigger shape: say a particular event, conversation, or view that we won't forget. The stories we continually construct about our past return to these singular details.

Our memory writes over the many, many other things we have experienced with these singular things. And yet, important though they are, they are really only a fraction of our available experience. The process of memory is a normally a bit like a perspective painting which first covers over a canvas with oil and then in doing so divides the painted space into figure and ground, creating a fore- and background.

The object of memoring is to bring into focus those experiences that are in the background, or even to uncover the canvas; to remember what would be forgotten without the help of some stimulus. Much of what needs memoried will apparently be insignificant, but will be really meaningful once you recover it.

Memoring needs to work beyond memory, to counter its usual effects. Because of this, the best memorings are fundamentally creative and enriching in that they give events, feelings and sensations back to us.

My plan on this blog is to work on my own memoring, to try and develop good and better ways of memoring and to uncover as many memorings as I can.