#memo

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. ↗

— Will Self

#journals #memory #notebook #writing #information

There were thieves and hypocrites among us, to be sure, and true saints sprinkled here and there, but most were simply good, honest people who worshiped their Creator the best they knew how. We were a family. ↗

— Donna Chapman Gilbert

#memories #religion #worship #family

The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society] The founder of the 'false memory' movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied this and responded by launching a spectacular counter-attack, which enjoyed apparently unlimited and uncritical air time in the mass media and provoke Establishment institutions that had made no public utterance about abuse to pronounce on the accused adults' repudiation of it. p171-172 The 'British False Memory Syndrome Society' lent a scientific aura to the allegations - the alchemy of 'falsehood' and 'memory' stirred with disease and science. The new name pathologised the accusers and drew attention away from the accused. Buy the so-called syndrome attacked not only the source of the stories but also the alliances between the survivors' movement and practitioners in the health, welfare, and the criminal justice system. The allies were represented no longer as credulous dupes but as malevolent agents who imported a miasma of the 'false memories' into the imaginations of distressed victims. Roger Scotford was a former naval officer turned successful property developer living in a Georgian house overlooking an uninterrupted valley in luscious middle England. He was a rich man and was able to give up everything to devote himself to the crusade. He says his family life was normal and that he had been a 'Dr Spock father'. But his first wife disagrees and his second wife, although believing him innocent, describes his children's childhood as very difficult. His daughters say they had a significantly unhappy childhood. In the autumn of 1991, his middle daughter invited him to her home to confront him with the story of her childhood. She was supported by a friend and he was invited to listen and then leave. She told him that he had abused her throughout her youth. Scotford, however, said that the daughter went to a homeopath for treatment for thrush/candida and then blamed the condition on him. He also said his daughter, who was in her twenties, had been upset during a recent trip to France to buy a property. He said he booked them into a hotel where they would share a room. This was not odd, he insisted, 'to me it was quite natural'. He told journalists and scholars the same story, in the same way, reciting the details of her allegations, drawing attention to her body and the details of what she said he had done to her. Some seemed to find the detail persuasive. Several found it spooky. p172-173 ↗

— Beatrix Campbell

#bfmss #child-abuse #child-rape #child-sex-abuse #enable-abuse

I know of no trunk full of old heirlooms, no felt hats or army uniforms. There are no tarnished medals or gold watches. I've stopped dreaming of discovering the old shoe box filled with the history of our family, the documents and letters that recorded our family's arrival and the historical milestones as my grandfathers left their mark on a place. There is no journal or diary. I do not know if they knew how to read or write. I could easily dismiss their existence. Their lives seem empty and still, void of emotion. I cannot tell if they wear scars. I only know of my grandfathers as broken old men. ↗

— David Mas Masumoto

#dreams

When we remember our former selves, there is always that little figure with its long shadow stopping like an uncertain belated visitor on a lighted threshold at the far end of some impeccably narrowing corridor. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#family

It was like watching a movie being played on the blank screen of his mind; the only difference was that he did not get bored, no matter how many times he watched it. ↗

— Faraaz Kazi

#memories #sad-love #love

It never leaves, not with someone we love. Their presence burns too vivid in our memories. Happen that is as it should be, for otherwise we would too easy forget. ↗

— Helen Hollick

#memories #love

I fly through memory to find a newborn love. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#find #finding-love-love #flying #literature #literature-quotes

In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#nostalgia #recollection #love

في المرَّةِ الأولى عندما متنا لَمْ نَجِد سريراً يُلائم أجسادنا المُكتظَّة بأشياءٍ جميلة وبقينا بلا نومٍ لأيامٍ نُخفِّف حمولة داخلنا من رداءةِ ما عَلِق... طائرات ورقية رسمناها في صيف 2008 بوسترات أفلام رخيصة كانت نتيجة خوفنا من أن نفشل في الإنجاب قمصان زاهية نرتديها حينما تقهرنا الرغبة، نرتديها بدافع الضحك والملل والعادة؛ رسائل بريدية تحمل أُغنية، أخبار قديمة، قصائد نُمرِّرها عبر أيقونة سريعة، محادثة مرئية تُعيد لنا ملامحنا القديمة حزن بنفسجيّ كأخرِ وردة بيننا ذبحة صدريّة انغمست في أصابعنا فتوقّفنا عن الكتابة ؛ المرّة الأولى كانت كافيةً جداً لإعادةِ الاختيار وأنْ ننام ونوافذنا مفتوحة ليجِد الحبَّ مُتَّسعاً. ↗

— Nour Albawardi

#memories #love