Alternative Memories

First Blood

Alternative memories are an interesting phenomenon, e.g., having memories for things that did not exist.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends over the years.  Should I have the same conversation again at a later date; the response is not only completely different, but they deny ever having said the original statements, at all.

For instance, back in 1983, me and one of my friends, Glenn, went to see First Blood. At the time, I enjoyed it. (Being young and all.) Glenn remarked that if the book was as good as the movie, then he was certainly going to read it.

At this point, I should mention that for many, many years, I kept daily journals. They were meticulous, and I would often write down my friend’s comments or conversations, verbatim.  I was pretty good at remembering details.  If I needed to remember something, I would just go back and look it up.

This was one of those comments.  Oddly enough, a couple of years later, he said he had read the book before seeing the movie.  Glenn maintained he had enjoyed the book and had been looking forward to seeing the  movie.

I’ve had many similar conversations with Glenn over the years.  It made me scratch my head as to why he would change his story. He wasn’t that type of personality. 

He  was always meticulous with his facts and had an excellent memory.  He was not known to fabricate things.

Alternative Memories Of Others

As mentioned in my previous entry, the same thing happened with my friend Paul

Not only would he have a completely different memory of events to me, but there would be variances each time he told the story.

Paul didn’t tell tall tales; he didn’t have to. His life was extraordinary without them. I know because I got to share in some of the things that happened.

So, it frustrated me that we had different recollections of things.

In fact, we had so many arguments about what happened that I was convinced he had the worst memory of anyone I knew. Yet, he was more than adamant that he was right.

However, it didn’t stop there. Often, people would attribute things to me that I had never said or done. For instance, my ex-wife and her daughter swore up and down that I hated seeing movie trailers.

The odd thing was, not only did I enjoy them;  I don’t recall ever even suggesting I hated them. Yet, both shouted me down saying that I had said as much.

Then there were events in history that seemed to change. Things which I had been taught were real became just stories, and stories became actual events.

Real or Fiction?

One example is regarding Hanging Rock.

One night, a group of us went there. The gates were open and so we climbed it. (Yes, it was dark, but we had flashlights.)

As we sat at the top, Paul mentioned that he had believed the story, Picnic at Hanging Rock, written by Joan Lindsay, was real.  Now he believed that it was just fiction.

I had recently heard the same thing. I, too, believed it was a true story.,

Memories Of Someone Who Was Around

In fact, Glenn had once mentioned that his Grandmother, who was around at the time, remembered the incident; and the local theory was the girls had gone off with some boys.

The author, Joan Lindsay, said that the chapters came to her in a series of dreams.

This is an extract from an article printed in an Australian Newspaper.

Joan had woken that morning with the flecked remnants of a peculiar dream imprinted on the edges of her conscious. She knew immediately, she told Rae later that day, that it would make a good book. The dream had centered on a summer picnic at a place called Hanging Rock, which Joan knew well from her childhood holidays. Joan told Rae that the dream had felt so real that when she awoke at 7.30am, she could still feel the hot summer breeze blowing through the gum trees and she could still hear the peals of laughter and conversation of the people she’d imagined, and their gaiety and lightness of spirit as they set out on their joyful picnic expedition.

I have no doubt in my mind that she was picking up this story from a different timeline. This event really did happen but not in our current timeline.

The full, and very interesting article, can be read here.