Remembering with a forget-full memory

While I still remember the article I’ve just been reading, do let me pass on a word or two about memory, and as importantly – for me, anyway – forgetting.

When you have a few years under your belt, why is it that it’s our forgetfulness than gives away, well, our age, like some absent-minded professor.

I can tell you aspects of my toddlerhood, of that first day at school, of leaving Plymouth to sail around the world on my own.

Yet I can meet someone I was introduced to and chatted with only a day before and simply can’t recall the name.

Trapped underwater

In a dismasting of a yacht in a South Atlantic storm one night, I recall clearly being trapped underwater and realising there could be no escape.

I don’t recall it so vividly because I spoke to many people afterwards about it because it was a month before I saw another human.

I remember so clearly on that month adrift finding and opening joyfully a packet of nuts and raisins. Oh, and I found a Walkman in a waterproof container that survived the overturning and swamping.

I tried it, and heard Beethoven, and recall the moment at if it happened this morning. Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventuring book, Sailing to Purgatory, at  http://sailingtopurgatory.com/index.php/feeds/423-remembering-with-a-forget-full-memory