Have you ever wondered how memories are made? Where they’re hidden? Or how they can be recalled and what happens after we’ve discarded them?

Ask the Keeper of Memories.

The Keeper works in NoTimeAtAll, a spherical suspension bridge constructed of the thinnest filaments as sensitive as your nerve endings, linking the Past and the Present. Balancing in mid-air, she gathers whole layers and fragmented segments from the Past, then lays out the myriad assortment and prepares them for storage and transport.

The Keeper has a vast hoard of solid, liquid and gaseous substances onto which she engrafts our ephemeral remembrances. From a pile of threads, ropes, hair strands, and frayed guitar strings, she may weave a rough tapestry of our melancholiest days. From various oil and watercolor vials, she may add drops to a swirling pool, forming the vivid maelstrom of your first (or last) imperfect romance. From a bottomless beach pail, she may draw out unbroken cowrie shells or gnarled driftwood and lodge in their crevices echoes of half-finished songs or mementos of leftover regrets. From crystal atomizers, she may spray vapor to envelop the scent of an infant son’s milk-sweetened breath as he sleeps. And from a typesetter’s palette, she may combine glyphs and graphemes to recreate a crumpled note rendered unreadable by the salinity of tears.

She never runs out of these trapping materials; a second, even a millisecond, may be ensconced completely within whatever the Keeper chooses.

Once captured, these personal memories are ready for safekeeping. At her bidding, bank after bank of what appear to be ancient apothecary cabinets, with countless individual drawers bearing our names, surround the Keeper. Into these she stows her newest collections. Every seemingly tiny compartment holds a multitude of what each of us may summon from our Past.

Then, depending on her whim or upon my insistence or yours, she opens our respective boxes, scoops out a handful of its contents, and hurls them at breakneck speed or wafts them gently as bubbles surfacing to the consciousness of our Present.

In this way thus do we remember.

And though we all have good and bad memories, the Keeper does not discriminate one from the other. She welcomes whatever they may be, refusing to cringe even from the wasted moments of our lives. For the Keeper, no memory deserves special treatment. It is not for her to bother with the illogic of our thoughts and choices, the folly of what we have done and failed to do.

The task of capturing and transmitting memories never ceases. The Keeper is no artist: she is but an amalgamator. On occasion, she becomes careless, dropping bits and pieces of the armfuls she carries. Her mind wanders in those instances she longs to be mortal. Because the Keeper possesses no reminiscences of her own, all she can do is savor vicariously yours and mine as they nestle in her hands before she sends them to the Present and retrieves them upon their return.

And when we pass on, what then does the Keeper do with our cache of memories?

She saves them still, in reserve for the loved ones we leave behind, just in case they reclaim them on our behalf to make them their own.

Posted in: Exit Stage Write | Comments(2) | November 2007

Below is a recent post I made in the Year IV students’ blog for Internet Education Class in which I asked the seniors to write an essay on the possible practical applications of the internet for a particular career or profession they envision for themselves in a decade or so from now:

To a significant extent, the internet breaks down the barriers of real time and space. It expands our ability to roam and wander beyond our borders without budging from the privacy and security of our homes, schools or offices. (Hence, browser names such as Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Safari connote the sense of adventure surfing brings.) We can visit existing places without actually being there. While radio, TV, movies and other traditional mass media all offered this vicarious opportunity (and still do), the internet revolutionized it as we could now get to choose where to go and when we felt like it. We now had some control of what we want to experience through our very own personal pixellated window.

Computers and the internet also brought us new interactive worlds, realistic or fantastical. We can create avatars and “exist,” “live” or “die” in a digital universe, even one of our own making. (Students of Teacher Ygy’s Y2 class for Values Ed have immersed themselves in The Sims for their current project.)

(Users can become so engrossed in a digitally-simulated environment that they lose themselves in it. The line between the real and the virtual disappears. Not surprisingly, some game designers devote their lives to perfecting their creations, and for them, their real and virtual worlds merge.)

Internet and computer applications operate through a predominantly visual and audial medium, limiting our experience mostly to what our eyes and ears can perceive. Their technological pathways restrict feedback to our other senses (taste, touch, and smell). In contrast, print media like books and magazines have made efforts to engage our senses of touch and smell with perfumed strips and textured materials (for children’s books, we have Lift the Flap options and embedded swatches of cloth and other items). Of course, some interactive games, especially in video arcades (Dance Revo, first-person shootfests, race-car driving and sports sims) and now Nintendo’s Wii with its pointing and motion-sensing abilities, try to mimic a more physically faithful encounter, using mechanical (motor-driven) aids and more advanced gadgets like pressure-sensitive touchpads and remote controllers. However, simulation has (inherent) sensorial and physical limitations, including the following:

• It works only for controlled environments.
• 3D visual re-creation is more difficult to achieve than audio.
• Other sensory feedback either doesn’t exist or cannot attain a level of realism or acceptability for temporarily suspending one’s disbelief.

To state the obvious, some real-life (and not-so-real) experiences cannot be replicated.

Nonetheless, if we see the internet as a means not of supplanting our real-world life, but of complementing or enhancing it, then the challenge should be to find those opportunities for doing so.

Imagine yourself in the year 2020, choose one of the following, and write an essay on what possible uses the internet could further offer.

1. If I were a neuroscientist…
2. If I were a professional football player…
3. If I were an atheist…
4. If I had a band…
5. If I were an online game designer…
6. If I were a magazine editor…
7. If I were a nature conservationist…

Let’s make some common assumptions and describe them specifically (e.g., universal ultra-high speed internet access; projected or holographic avatars in sim-enabled areas; etc.).

Post your essay on the Y4 blog.

Deadline is Wednesday, 17 October 2007.

P.S. The seniors were given the option to choose other professions/careers. Submitted assignments thus far include Ana’s musings as a movie director and Steph on being a pilot.

Posted in: Exit Stage Write, Reflectcelfer | Comments(0) | October 2007

Below is a post I wrote last month for the seniors in the Year IV students’ blog for Internet Education Class:

Our dear Y4s,

It’s been four months since we first embarked on this experiment called Internet Education. With you guys, Teacher Connie and I have been exploring ways not just to to help you become better at surfing, but to share with you the nearly limitless possibilities of transforming your internet skills and forays into a humanizing experience.

The idea of an elective in internet education and law, sparked by T. Emma’s invitation for us to teach, was something entirely new for the school. We knew we couldn’t resist the challenge. Soon enough, we realized that our class (like our HEdCen.com site) meant offering ourselves up, this time together with a dozen unsuspecting Y4s, as volunteer test subjects. Thus, we’ve been meeting twice a week in the new computer lab, glorified guinea pigs trying to make sense of the maze of cyberspace.

From our feedback session last Wednesday, it looks like Teacher Connie and I have a bunch of truly appreciative guinea pigs! As I was listening to your comments about what you enjoyed as well as disliked about our course, it struck me that we’ve got something worthwhile going on here. And to hear that you wanted to meet more often and have longer (but earlier) class sessions warmed my heart, even though I wasn’t sure if you guys weren’t just sucking up to the teach.

Keep up the good work peeps! We’re creating a legacy here for future batches.

Sincerely yours,

T. Eric

Posted in: Props, Exit Stage Write | Comments(0) | October 2007