[UA] Clockworks and Memories

[Gaston Phillips]

on 6/27/01 11:54 AM, John Scott at wild at park.net wrote:

> At 16:14 27/06/01 +0100, you wrote:
> 
>> Gah. And once again, Tynes has got there first. "The Changeling" is a perfect
>> example of this sort of thing....
> 
> Gene Wolfe - "Soldier of the Mists" also works much like this - a Greek
> soldier cursed to lose his memory every time he goes to sleep.
> 

Tim Powers' _Earthquake Weather_ has a bottle of Dionysian Wine in it, which
causes you to lose memories to the God.

Here's what's written about it:

"As he reeled past the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves statues, Cochran was
nervously ransacking his memory.  He had forgotten something here today - he
had known the wine would make him forget it.  But what had it been?  Then he
remembered saying to Cody, 'My dead wife'; and, 'my wife was more married to
the god than to me.'  Apparently he had been married, and the wife was dead.
He had to concentrate to keep the idea from sliding out of his mind, like
thoughts that occur late at night in bed when the light has been turned out.
I was, he thought - what?  Somebody was more married to the god than to me.
When was anybody married to me...?  Married to the god - to Dionysos?  I
must have been thinking of the woman in that strange version of _A Tale of
Two Cities_, Ariachne.  Somethjing about a Dickens novel...?  I can't
remember.
Finally he was just aware that he had forgotten somethingl but the awareness
carried no anxiety.  It didn't have the mental flavor of importance.  If it
was important, he thought, I'll no doubt be reminded of it." (EW 553)

Then, later,

"It was a topic that was connected to his memories of his dead wife, and all
those memories really had dissapeared.  He knew these days that he had been
married, and he could even recognize photos of the Nina woman, but he was
like an amnesia victim - except that an amnesia victim would probably want
to learn about the lost past.  Along with the memories, Sid had lost any
interest in what they had been of." (EW 621)

So, I guess the take on lost memories is: Once they're gone, you don't want
them back.  Someone, earlier, described them as 'Handwriting that looks
almost like yours' - that seems appropriate.  You recognize them, but you
don't identify with them.

Alternately, or additionally, the Mechanomancer may not even /know/ that the
memories have been lost.

gaston


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