Saturday, February 23, 2008

Amazing Memory Man

Here's an interesting story from CNN about a guy who remembers everything.

In a letter to his brother, the twentieth century Irish novelist James Joyce once described imagination as the constant reworking of the material of memory, or something like that, and Joyce seems to have had a phenomenal memory and a prodigious ability to rework it.

It is this reworking faculty that makes memory something creative, something sacred. Otherwise it is just like a really good scrapbook.

The article mentions another woman, known only to the public by the initials A.J., who also had an astounding memory and who describes it like this:
That woman is in her mid-40s and was identified only by the initials A.J. She told McGaugh that whenever she hears a date, memories from that date in previous years flood her mind like a running movie. The phenomenon, she laments, is "nonstop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting."

"Most have called it a gift, but I call it a burden," she wrote. "I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!!!"

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