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elfsI awoke this morning with a very odd sense of nostalgia; a dream of my grandfather's farm in upper New York state, which I think I visited exactly once, when I was seven. I wondered if it was still farm country, or if it had been long overrun by fevelopers and turned into a plot of condominiums.
I don't much like discussing dreams; I don't believe they're that useful. Dreams, to my mind, are the leftover impressions you get while your brain is sorting through its memories of the day before. They're literally detritus, the leftover connectome of your neurons as they transition from sleep to wakefulness. Still, I'm curious: What experiences from yesterday led my brain to tap into those memories?
I'm not even sure they are memories. I do know that I visited Amel's farm once, and it was when I was seven. I have vague impressions of a white house, a porch, some wrought iron, a rusting plow, a lot of dirt thrown around. It was late fall. But for all I know, those memories are jumbled together with farmhouses where I stayed once during a youth-oriented Outward Bound thing I did when I was twelve, or the later summer schools I went to in New Hampshire when I was fifteen and sixteen. Every time you remember something, that act of remembering is itself an experience, and your memory of the thing gets re-written slightly, modified.
I have no idea where the farm is, or was. Somewhere near Buffalo, but that's about it. Amel came to America as an immigrant and not a refugee; he left his small town on the German-Italian border when he could see the rising tide, and he was no fool, so when he arrived in America he had money and spoke English. His first wife passed away, and his second wife, Beverly, I'm told was a lovely woman but she didn't register much with my father, her stepson, so I don't recall her at all.
I don't much like discussing dreams; I don't believe they're that useful. Dreams, to my mind, are the leftover impressions you get while your brain is sorting through its memories of the day before. They're literally detritus, the leftover connectome of your neurons as they transition from sleep to wakefulness. Still, I'm curious: What experiences from yesterday led my brain to tap into those memories?
I'm not even sure they are memories. I do know that I visited Amel's farm once, and it was when I was seven. I have vague impressions of a white house, a porch, some wrought iron, a rusting plow, a lot of dirt thrown around. It was late fall. But for all I know, those memories are jumbled together with farmhouses where I stayed once during a youth-oriented Outward Bound thing I did when I was twelve, or the later summer schools I went to in New Hampshire when I was fifteen and sixteen. Every time you remember something, that act of remembering is itself an experience, and your memory of the thing gets re-written slightly, modified.
I have no idea where the farm is, or was. Somewhere near Buffalo, but that's about it. Amel came to America as an immigrant and not a refugee; he left his small town on the German-Italian border when he could see the rising tide, and he was no fool, so when he arrived in America he had money and spoke English. His first wife passed away, and his second wife, Beverly, I'm told was a lovely woman but she didn't register much with my father, her stepson, so I don't recall her at all.
