 
                         20051021.00

     As soon as made explicit, the prevalent assumption that
memories are fixed and relatively unchangeable appears
mistaken.  On the contrary, it is much more plausible that
memory is dynamic, that it is in flux, that it waxes and
wanes subject to external and to internal forces, that memory
it may lie latent for years, to recrudesce perhaps for no
apparent reason at all.

     The explanation for this misapprehension, for the belief
that a memory is a definable, recognizable entity, is the
penchant to idealization, the compulsion to interpret the
world as consisting of discrete and separable objects, mental
as well as physical.  If one wishes to understand his view of
the world, nothing is more important than to disabuse oneself
of this illusion.

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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
