Happy fourth of july, as you may know, "Independence Day".... i have always known the 4th of July, 1776 as the birthday of the united states of america, when a document known as The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, thus creating along with other symbols and texts, a written covenant, a "national imaginary". Here is an excerpt from this beautiful piece of writing:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "
I texted my dear friend Rachel in Northern California, she and her family had just been at a parade to celebrate the holiday. My brother Maui was watering maize in Salt Lake City. I am with the Homesteaders in Hau'ula, getting ready to eat lots of good me'a kai, am watching a Steven Seagal movie marathon on cable and just chilling before I leave TONIGHT to Aotearoa... and then on Monday July 7th arriving in Tongatapu...Can't wait!!!
The Steven Seagal movie is about a couple guys escaping from prison, and its long, and melodramatic, and what I'd expect on Spike TV! A whole station dedicated to B movies and B advertisements of "things you don't need" says Kat!
Where I long to be....Just "be"! Home is where the heart is...and other thoughts! My brain is on fire, and my legs getting numb...itching to go, and still stuff to pack...what stuff, that rules the senses. My stomach is still recovering slowly from the bottle of wine I drank yesterday to make a think twice decision: once while sober, once while not, and see which one rules!! Unless one gets the same answer twice, its not a think twice decision...Well I read that in one of these therapy books that lines 2 whole rows of Mom's bookshelf, and I believe it was called "The Road Less Traveled part II"...by that one guy...
So the journey continues. I am so excited right now, and butterflies in my stomach...must go eat..
I rifled through a boxes of family history documents here at Malu Malu 'o Paini, finding letters, which will frame up my autobiography....and that's pretty much what I did on my summer month in Hau'ula....besides hiking, swimming and not a whole lot else!
7.05.2008
6.30.2008
Notes From "A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering", by Elizabeth S. Parker, Larry Cahill & James L. McGaugh, NEUROCASE (2006) 12, 35-49
....Beginning to think about writers and memory for my chapter on autobiography.....
Abstract:
This report describes AJ, a woman whose remembering dominates her life. Her memory is “nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic.” AJ
spends an excessive amount of time recalling her personal past with considerable accuracy and reliability. If given a date, she can tell you
what she was doing and what day of the week it fell on. She differs from other cases of superior memory who use practiced mnemonics to
remember vast amounts of personally irrelevant information. We propose the name hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek word
thymesis meaning remembering, and that AJ is the first reported case.
My notes:
So, just what is "unusual autobiographical remembering"?
At age twelve, this woman "became aware that she was able to vividly recall the details of the year before and exact dates"
"In contrast to the vast literature on impaired memory and
the amnesic syndrome, relatively little is known about
forms of superior memory. Previously reported cases of
superior memory seem to have in common the ability to
perform memory feats with meaningless information such
as learning long displays of words or digits and repeating
them back. None were reported to have superior autobio-
graphical memory or to be bothered by constant remember-
ing of personal experiences." (36)
-Diaries-
"From the age of 10 to the age of 34, AJ kept diaries, nearly
every day. Her diaries were various forms of scheduling cal-
endars with small entry areas, some just one inch by one inch.
Some years, her entries were completely filled with writing
so micrographic that even AJ read them to us with great diffi-
culty. Other years, her entries were less detailed, and more
readable, with 6–7 brief entries per day. She said that she was
“obsessed with writing things down” because things would
stay in her mind if she didn’t write them down in her diary. It
made her feel better to have things written down. She said she
rarely went back to review them. These diaries provided a
resource for our verification of her recollections. " (38)
"She says she can recall her
brother’s birth when she was three years, nine months old.
According to AJ she had always had a richly detailed mem-
ory for episodes but there was a change in her memory when
at age eight her family moved from the east coast to the west.
She reports she had loved their life in the east and did not
want to move. She says she was “traumatized by the move”
and that after the move she started to “organize her memo-
ries,” making lists of friends from back east, looking at pic-
tures of her house and thinking about the past “a lot.” She
states that after the move, her memories became “clearer.”
"She says her personal memories are vivid, like a running
movie and full of emotion." (39)
"One way to conceptualize this phenomenon is to see AJ as
someone who spends a great deal of time remembering her
past and who cannot help but be stimulated by retrieval cues.
Normally people do not dwell on their past but they are ori-
ented to the present, the here and now. Yet AJ is bound by
recollections of her past. As we have described, recollection
of one event from her past links to another and another, with
one memory cueing the retrieval of another in a seemingly
“unstoppable” manner. According to one theory, it takes a
special neurocognitive state to enable present stimuli to be
interpreted as such cues. Such a state is called episodic
retrieval mode and refers to the orientation of the subject as
she focuses on past happenings (Tulving 1983, 1999). " (46)
"She is dominated by her constant, uncontrollable remembering,
finds her remembering both soothing and burdensome, thinks
about the past “all the time,” lives as if she has in her mind “a
running movie that never stops”..." (46)
"Give her an opportunity to recall one event and there is a spreading activation of rec-
ollection from one island of memory to the next. Her retrieval
mode is open, and her recollections are vast and specific.
There has been research on brain regions involved with epi-
sodic retrieval mode, but not on superabundant autobiograph-
ical memory as it has not been identified before." (46)
link to article: http://today.uci.edu/pdf/AJ_2006.pdf
Abstract:
This report describes AJ, a woman whose remembering dominates her life. Her memory is “nonstop, uncontrollable, and automatic.” AJ
spends an excessive amount of time recalling her personal past with considerable accuracy and reliability. If given a date, she can tell you
what she was doing and what day of the week it fell on. She differs from other cases of superior memory who use practiced mnemonics to
remember vast amounts of personally irrelevant information. We propose the name hyperthymestic syndrome, from the Greek word
thymesis meaning remembering, and that AJ is the first reported case.
My notes:
So, just what is "unusual autobiographical remembering"?
At age twelve, this woman "became aware that she was able to vividly recall the details of the year before and exact dates"
"In contrast to the vast literature on impaired memory and
the amnesic syndrome, relatively little is known about
forms of superior memory. Previously reported cases of
superior memory seem to have in common the ability to
perform memory feats with meaningless information such
as learning long displays of words or digits and repeating
them back. None were reported to have superior autobio-
graphical memory or to be bothered by constant remember-
ing of personal experiences." (36)
-Diaries-
"From the age of 10 to the age of 34, AJ kept diaries, nearly
every day. Her diaries were various forms of scheduling cal-
endars with small entry areas, some just one inch by one inch.
Some years, her entries were completely filled with writing
so micrographic that even AJ read them to us with great diffi-
culty. Other years, her entries were less detailed, and more
readable, with 6–7 brief entries per day. She said that she was
“obsessed with writing things down” because things would
stay in her mind if she didn’t write them down in her diary. It
made her feel better to have things written down. She said she
rarely went back to review them. These diaries provided a
resource for our verification of her recollections. " (38)
"She says she can recall her
brother’s birth when she was three years, nine months old.
According to AJ she had always had a richly detailed mem-
ory for episodes but there was a change in her memory when
at age eight her family moved from the east coast to the west.
She reports she had loved their life in the east and did not
want to move. She says she was “traumatized by the move”
and that after the move she started to “organize her memo-
ries,” making lists of friends from back east, looking at pic-
tures of her house and thinking about the past “a lot.” She
states that after the move, her memories became “clearer.”
"She says her personal memories are vivid, like a running
movie and full of emotion." (39)
"One way to conceptualize this phenomenon is to see AJ as
someone who spends a great deal of time remembering her
past and who cannot help but be stimulated by retrieval cues.
Normally people do not dwell on their past but they are ori-
ented to the present, the here and now. Yet AJ is bound by
recollections of her past. As we have described, recollection
of one event from her past links to another and another, with
one memory cueing the retrieval of another in a seemingly
“unstoppable” manner. According to one theory, it takes a
special neurocognitive state to enable present stimuli to be
interpreted as such cues. Such a state is called episodic
retrieval mode and refers to the orientation of the subject as
she focuses on past happenings (Tulving 1983, 1999). " (46)
"She is dominated by her constant, uncontrollable remembering,
finds her remembering both soothing and burdensome, thinks
about the past “all the time,” lives as if she has in her mind “a
running movie that never stops”..." (46)
"Give her an opportunity to recall one event and there is a spreading activation of rec-
ollection from one island of memory to the next. Her retrieval
mode is open, and her recollections are vast and specific.
There has been research on brain regions involved with epi-
sodic retrieval mode, but not on superabundant autobiograph-
ical memory as it has not been identified before." (46)
link to article: http://today.uci.edu/pdf/AJ_2006.pdf
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