I recently reread Latro of the Mist which combines two of Gene Wolfe’s books (Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete) into one book.  In this book Wolfe (who has been described by some as one of the best writers in the English language) tells the story of Latro, a Roman, who suffered a severe head injury while fighting for the Persian King, Xerxes, against the Greeks at the battle of Plataea.

          Latro has lost his long term memory and overnight forgets everything that happened the previous day.  As a sort of compensation he is able to see and talk to the gods.  He is told that he must write down a detailed account of the events of each day, and make sure to read it the next morning when he gets up so he can maintain some sort of continuity in his life.   The two books are thus the journal that he keeps (I just found out that there is a third book in the series: Soldier of Sidon.).   I enjoyed the books very much, and as always Wolfe showed his consumate skill as a writer.

     I was reminded of these books today after reading an article about the death of Henry Gustav Molaison, who after an operation performed in 1953 to relieve severe seizures lost his ability to retain long term memories…or almost any memory except some from his childhood.   This is a man like the fictional Latro who constantly found himself in a new world, living almost solely in the present.  The article didn’t say how long Molaison retained his memories, although I believe it was much shorter than one day.

          Two finger-shaped slivers of tissue from the hippocampus were removed and thus in effect removed much of Molaison’s personality.  This man has been extensively studied for 55 years, (never remembering from one interview to the next the interviewer), and as far as I know nobody suggested that he keep a daily journal to maintain some sort of continuity in his life!   I have to wonder why this wasn’t suggested to this poor man.  At least he could have made recordings.   Perhaps his memory didn’t even last one day, perhaps it only lasted minutes before fading.

         Apparently Molaison could retain motor skills learned from prior experimental sessions which led scientists to conclude that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating memories.  One which they called declarative memory recorded names, faces and experiences, storing them until consciously retrieved.  This system depends especially on the hippocampus.

      The other system, known as motor learning depends on other brain systems and is unconscious.  This explains why a person can ride a bicycle years after last riding one.

      This all makes me wonder about the nature of consciousness and memory.  Apparently Molaison was an easy going fellow, and when living with relatives would navigate through the day drawing upon memories from his first 27 years, fixng a lunch, making his bed, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, etc.  This man lived in the present.  Can a person have a true personality in this condition?  Some say that beasts live in the present, in the now, with no past and no intimations of the future.  After watching a beloved member of my family gradually lose their memory and their personality, this subjects holds a special interest for me.

              Molaison lived for 82 years and was born Feb 26, 1926.  He left no survivors.  He died in an institution…I wonder if he ever saw the gods.

I was thinking about memory as I hurried along in the rain to make it to my fifth grade class before the tardy bell. I don’t remember the exact details of what was going on in my mind, but I decided to memorize a scene to see if I could recall it later. I looked down at my feet and saw this white rock on the ground. I tried to commit that scene of that perfectly ordinary object to memory. As I took a short cut through the boy’s rest room which had a door to the outside, I clicked the shutter in my mind to memorize a broken step. Unfortunately, I still have these scenes perfectly preserved in my mind. I hope our minds have a very large capacity, because I’d hate to be taking up limited space on such mundane things.

However, I suppose these useless memory items did have a function. It allowed me to realize that one could memorize things with a minimum amount of effort under certain circumstances. I have a few other such scenes in my memory. These were scenes that were not deliberately memorized, but scenes that somehow imprinted themselves because I simply caught a brief glimpse of the occurrence. They were like snapshots, brief, transient, but lasting.

One scene is a view of the sediment in the bottom of a jar that slowly crumbled as the liquid was being decanted off in Chemistry lab. Another was a flash shot of a student expectorating as we all hurried to get out of class at the end of the school day. It must have been winter, because the low slanting sun shone off the stream of saliva as it was ejected from the mouth of the student leaving a trail of tiny shining droplets suspended shimmering in the air.

I have other such “memory photos” later in my life, but fortunately they are of more interesting scenes. I have always been fascinated with capturing such instants in time. Perhaps because of this I have always loved photography which freezes such moments allowing people years later to share that particular event.

The thing that I like about the Japanese style of poetry called Haiku is that it also captures an instant of time in words. Haiku consists of three lines of 5-7-5 syllables respectively. However, in my opinion, photography and Haiku ideally should communicate something, an idea perhaps, or even better a mood or a feeling that is difficult to put into words. Such communication is hard to impart. The mere act of saying something, or spelling it out in concrete words often dissipates the subtlety of the feeling. Often the feeling or mood is best put forth by suggestion, by misdirection, by subtlety, not by pushing it into someone’s face.

For centuries Japan has had a form of poetry called waka (or tanka) consisting of five lines with syllables of 5-7-5-7-7, from which linked verses of the same type evolved called Renga. In Renga each verse (5-7-5-7-7 syllables) typically is composed by different people and is a collaborative effort often between as many as fourteen to fifteen people.

The opening verse of Renga is called a Hokku consisting of 5-7-5 syllables which established the setting: season, mood, and emotions, from which the other writers took their cue. The Hokku developed into the Haiku which now stands alone.

Traditional Haiku often concentrated on nature and contained a reference to the season (Kigo). The Kigo can just be the word for the season, or it can allude to the season in an indirect manner. Often traditional haikus included a cutting word, or kireji, which was placed at the end of the lines. It denotes a pause or a full stop and allows a moment to reflect on the preceding lines. In English this can be done by punctuation. Since Japanese is different from English, the 5-7-5 structure has often been abandoned by English speaking writers, and can follow a more free flowing sort of structure. Some advocate a 3-5-3 or 2-3-2 structure for English haiku. Here are some “rules” of Haiku. As Basho himself said, “Learn the rules and then throw them away.” More to come on this subject.