Battered down memories of battened down memories
I’ve missed sketching outside for most of 2020. Even before COVID hit, MS pretty much had me locked down for most of that rocky year. Watching the waves of not only coronavirus, but of how the oscillating stalwart then fickle public response to it has been a tremendously emotional kaleidoscopic plateau to navigate — especially watching how the collective memory here of the valiant stance against the pandemic back in March all but evaporated by June and now we are paying
What will be remembered?
And how?
And with what?
Two “fresh” reminders have really brought this into perspective for me.
(1) My brain is now measurably atrophying.
Apparently, I was informed of this while hospitalized back in February for several weeks after a series of violent seizures. I hadn’t recalled that at all until just now — late November — when I apparently saw the hospital report from back then.
I like my brain. It has all of my memories and thoughts and the still unfinished rickets and scaffolding of imagination that I’ve been trying to construct to prepare sounding out the whatever it is that is.
I guess having somehow wound up forgetting having had learned such unforgettably shattering news from only a few months ago is a bluntly weird way of my brain asserting that it has, indeed been atrophying 🫤.
(2) If that weren’t charming enough, I mentioned to my psychiatrist that I had been forgetting all sorts of things from the trivial to the pressingly important. These lapses were in no way normal — at least for me. Examples include suggesting to my wife that we see a certain film, only to learn that we had seen that very film in a movie theatre just a few weeks ago. Even looking at trailers and scenes from it did nothing to jog my recollection. Fortunately — kinda — I apparently really enjoyed it, according to my wife. My psychiatrist asked me to get an MRI because he wanted to check something. When I came back to visit he was all gleaming and gleeful. “It’s exactly what I thought. Your brain is atrophying! That would explain your memory problems!” He was so thrilled at having guessed it correctly. Clearly he hasn’t won any awards for bedside manner.
Or, maybe that is actually the most professional and courteous tone he could’ve adopted. My guess is that nobody is going to react to learning that their brain is atrophying well. Maybe I should thank my psychiatrist for making light of it 🤔.
Shucks, I dunno 🤷♂️
Just gotta keep on making art and otherwise trying to grapple with the whatever it is that is, preferably with an augmented sense of urgency.