The Persistence of Memory

I do not have a computer of my own. I use the public access computers at my local public library. Sometimes I have to wait more than an hour to get the next available computer. The whole problem is: how to kill time. Sometimes I read; sometimes I listen to music on my portable CD player. And sometimes I play a memory game, a private mind game.

Once I'd learned the trick of remembering things, I have never had a moment's boredom. Sometimes I exercise my memory on my room and, starting from a corner, make the round, noting every object I see on the way. At first it was over in a minute or two. But each time I repeated the experience, it took a little longer. I made a point of visualizing every piece of furniture, and each article upon or in it, and then every detail of each article, and finally the details of the details, so to speak: a tiny dent of encrustation, or a chipped edge, and the exact grain and color of the woodwork. At the same time I forced myself to keep my inventory in mind from start to finish, in the right order and omitting no item. With the result that, after a few weeks, I could spend hours merely in listing the objects in my room. I found the more I thought the more details, half-forgotten or malobserved, floated up from my memory. There seemed to be no end to them.

So I learned that even after a single day's experience of the outside world a man could easily live a hundred years in a mental prison. He'd have laid up enough memories never to be bored. Obviously in one way, memory is a compensation for boredom.