I sometimes feel like Judith in Clive Barker’s Imajica
. If you have not read this stunning masterpiece, this reference will be meaningless to you. Judith, at least the first Judith you meet, is a replica, her memories of things beyond about 5 years past are simply missing. For so many things, this is true for me. I simply do not hold on to most memories the way others appear to. If I were a computer, I’d say the memories were compressed and archived somewhere or perhaps the cache was simply cleared. On the upside, my fine brain has great processing speed, uncluttered by older unused memories.
Some learning theorists suggest that there is an advantage to suppressing old material to learn new. Obviously there are advantages to recovering the old information eventually, but sometimes you really do need to forget what you "know" to learn something new.
I’d say it was aging in my case but I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. And granted, 5 years is an over-statement, but only barely. I was sitting watching the season 1 episodes of the X-Files today. Skinner made his first appearance. I know he is important. I felt an immediate joy at seeing him. I have/had a huge crush on Skinner but I have no idea why. Yeah, just call me Judith.