Wednesday's Word -- Memory

Mnemosyne (1881), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Memorial Day has me thinking about this old memory, and the word "memory."

"Memory" means the "mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience."  Why is it that memory tortures us so, when we most want to forget, and then escapes us when we most need to remember?  As Mark Twain lamented about memory and aging:  "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened."  {I can only hope that the years will leave me with rose-colored memories.}      


But I like that "memory" also means the "capacity of a material, such as plastic or metal [or a human being] to return to a previous shape after deformation."  Yes, we (and plastic) are resilient, if not indestructible.  We snap back.

At its origin, "memory" comes from the Indo-European root *men-, meaning (no, not the male gender, but rather) to "think."  I suppose The Thinker was a man, but (at least according to mythology) the original thinker was a woman:  Mnemosyne (from the same root *men-).  Mnemosyne was the Titan goddess of memory and mother to the nine Muses.  She is said to have invented language and words and represented the rote memorization required, before the introduction of writing, to preserve the stories of history.  (You probably know the word mnemonic (learning technique that aids memory), which comes from her name.)  "[T]hey say that Mnemosyne discovered the uses of the power of reason, and that she gave a designation to every object about us by means of the names which we use to express whatever we would and to hold conversation one with another."  [Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 67. 3]  Thank you, Mnemosyne.  


It is also said that Mnemosyne presided over a pool in Hades called the pool of remembrance.  This pool was next to the pool of forgetting (the river Lethe).  Those entering Hades were encouraged not to drink from Lethe, but rather to drink from Mnemosyne's pool and continue along the journey into the land of the dead with memories intact.   

As for me, I am no Titan, but I do preside over my own pool of remembrance.  Some days I wish I could take a sip from (or dip in, for that matter) the pool of forgetting, but mostly I am grateful for my memories -- for the joys, the sorrows and the lessons contained in the depths.        

Wednesday's Word -- Cancer

Photo by Danielle Hughson -- Flickr

"Is Enya music supposed to be calming?" I wondered, sitting stripped of all dignity, clothed in a one-size-fits-all robe in the waiting area at the imaging clinic.  Perhaps so, but the Enya music was making me frantic.   

One day, one night, one moment,

my dreams could be, tomorrow.

One step, one fall, one falter,

east or west, over earth or by ocean.

One way to be my journey,

this way could be my Book of Days.*

When you're waiting to find out whether lump = breast cancer, you don't need a reminder that you're standing at a crossroads.  Not even from the soothing likes of Enya.  

Have you ever wondered about the word "cancer"?  It's such an unfortunately common word these days.  According to the American Cancer Society, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States.  Half of all men and one-third of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer during their lifetimes.  

Did you know that the word "cancer" means crab?  Maybe you knew that, because Cancer is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac.**

Has it ever occurred to you to question why we use the same word to describe a ruthless disease and a  crustacean crawling on the ocean floor?  I suppose there is some desperate connection.  As T.S. Eliot put it (indulge me my repeated references to this beloved poem),

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

I've always loved that line.  Good pacing words, they are.  

Turns out that long-ago Hippocrates (Greek physician and so-called father of medicine) used the Greek words carcinos and carcinoma for crab to describe tumors.  "Cancer" is the Latin word for crab.  It's said that Hippocrates thought the finger-like spreading projections from a cancer tumor looked like the shape of a crab.  Of course Hippocrates also believed that cancer is caused by an excess of black bile in any given site of the body (out of balance with the other lovely fluids of blood, phlegm, and yellow bile).  For the next 1400 years, people pretty much thought Hippocrates had it right.  

The ancient Egyptians, who documented the earliest cases of cancer (back in around 1500 BC), believed cancer was caused by the Gods.  The details were recorded on a papyrus, documenting eight cases of tumors occurring on the breast.  I shuddered to read that these tumors were treated by cauterization -- which involved destroying the tissue with a hot instrument called "the fire drill."  Gives new meaning to the need to get out NOW, doesn't it?  All alarms ringing.  

Thankfully, and after a tortured eternity of pondering my own far and away and book of days, I was called into another examination room, subjected to more humiliating examinations and tests (ironically performed with something the likes of Metallica in the background).  Then a smiling Doctor Gupta, summoned as messenger, informed me that I do not in fact have breast cancer.  

On the way home (after many long exhales and a short detour for some retail therapy), I found myself stuck for some time at an intersection.  A fire truck, several police cars, and a half-dozen emergency workers had taken over, lights flashing off the glass fragments littering the asphalt.  Metal crushed and folded in.  Stretcher waiting for the unmoving body extracted from what used to be a car.  For once, I wasn't even anxious or irritated by the traffic delay.  I just sat and thought and wondered and counted my blessings.  There are many ways to leave this life -- moving on to the floors of silent seas.  

*Lyrics from Enya's Far and Away.  I wonder is Enya referencing R. Chambers' 1869 The Book of Days, A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities?  Who knows.  The Book of Days has been described as a detailed description of key historical events, the life and times of people, both great and infamous, and long forgotten customs of cultures from every corner of the world.  

**I like the tale about Cancer, from the Twelve Labors of Hercules.  While Hercules was busy fighting the multi-headed Hydra monster, the goddess Hera (who hated her step-son Hercules) sent Cancer the crab to distract him.  Cancer tried to kill Hercules, but Hercules kicked Cancer so hard that it was sent into the sky.  I've witnessed what that crab can do to a person's life, and it does require something along the lines of a Herculean kick (along with a good dose of grace) to conquer it.  

Humpty Dumpty Is Growing Old

Well, call me Humpty Dumpty.  Actually I don't even have the excuse of sitting on a wall.  I just had a great fall -- twice actually in the past week.  My husband has taken to asking me whether I feel steady?  And do I think I might be about to fall again?

All joking aside, the whole falling thing has left me a bit shaken.  Am I actually getting old?  Whatever happened to the me that grabbed a good friend, a swimsuit and a credit card and took off minutes later on a spur-of-the-moment Tijuana trip, singing "I'm Not Growing Old" by The Origin at the top of her lungs?

Well, that me is no more.  Actually, she was gone quite some time ago.

About the falls.  The first one happened while I was standing on a stool in my closet -- reaching, strehhh-tching just a bit too far to the right to grab hold of a shoe box high on a shelf.  I had a great fall, and it took some effort to put myself back together again.  In the process of crashing down, I destroyed my husband's side of the closet organizing system (ripping down the shoe rack).  I was left dazed, with cuts and bruises.

My husband came in (we were both getting ready for work) and asked what in the world had just happened.  "I fell."  "I can see that," he said.  "The question is why and how?"  "I really don't know.  I just lost my balance, and there I went."  Now, I'm not the most coordinated person ever, but falling like this is not in my normal repertoire.  "Are you okay?"  "No, not really."  "Is there anything I can do?"  "Just leave me in my shameful state and let me moan and groan for a while."  Husband exits shaking his head.

The second fall occurred a couple of days later.  I was in the shower when I realized that I needed a new bar of soap.  No problem.  I stepped out, dripping all over the place and grabbed a bar from the nearby tub.  Trying to minimize the puddles, I leaped into the shower with a step, that turned into a slide and a near concussion.  Thankfully, I caught the brunt of the fall with my arms and my backside.  I have the bruises to show for it.  Added to the ones I had already created on my legs, I have quite the collection.

Again, my husband runs into the room.  This time even more incredulous than the first.  "Are you kidding me?  What just happened?"  "I don't know.  I just lost my balance, and there I went."  "Are you okay?!"  "Actually, no.  But I don't think I broke anything."  "Why do you keep falling?  What's wrong with you?"  "Just go, because that's not helping."  Husband exits, shaking his head.

The truth is, I'm not sure what's wrong with me.  Normal people don't fall like that.  Not even border-line-clutsy people.  All I can think is that I'm getting old.

And then a couple days later, I get the message that an elderly man in our neighborhood fell at his home, and had to be taken to the hospital.  Broken ribs and blood in his urine.  That would have been me if I were three or four decades older.  I used to wonder when I heard about an elderly person falling and breaking a hip.  Now I see that it could happen.  Very easily.

As for me -- middle-aged-I-am-in-fact-growing-old-after-all person that I am -- I'm grateful to be nursing bruises instead of breaks.  Maybe I should pull out that old Origins album again.