Amnesiosis

All day yesterday I thought it was today. I spoke to my daughter in Arizona yesterday and she noted my confusion. After several ping-pong days, it was a beautiful day nevertheless. I guess I am getting rather used to confusion. My elderfriends are getting the giggles over our mutual forgetfulness and confusion. We are forming support groups as we watch technology leaving us in the dust.

Bernie and I had a conversation yesterday in which we both remembered something someone said but neither of us could remember when, where or by whom the verbal nugget was pronounced. We were talking about something we both experienced in the past day or two. We had trouble remembering where we could have both been at the same time. The previous few days had dissipated in the lovely warmth of the afternoon as we sat over our barbecued ribs and potato salad.

As a writer, it has become clear to me how people can take credit for some idea that did not originate in their own heads. Trying to credit all sources when you are in perpetual amnesiatic stupor is a waste. Actually, it is rather Zen-like. You might as well live in the moment when the past has gone off the end of the dock. And we all know that it is useless to spin the wheels trying to imagine the future. If there is one thing we have learned after all these years on earth, it is that the future we paint is rarely like the one that actually shows up.