flashbulb memories
“Neuroscientists have confirmed tha strong emotions, which release adrenaline, which activates the brain, make for emotionally charged memories, often called flashbulb memories. One such memory for me is of the night in December 1994 when I found myself lost in the Sahara Desert in Niger and had to spend fourteen hours alone until I was found by my partys Tuareg guides.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
We who have Alzheimers
“Morris Friedell, who has Alzheimers disease . . . has written: We who have Alzheimers can appreciate clouds, leaves, flowers as we never did before.. . .
People who find themselves suffering with Alzheimers sometimes experience the freshness of life that can last for a while and, before they deteriorate to the next phase of the disease, can really be quite profound. The way it was expressed to me is that people would see the color of a beautiful flower and theyd look away and theyd see the flower again but it wouldnt be againit would be the experiencing of the initial beauty of that color and that natural form for the first time. And there is something profound about that type of experience as opposed to experiencing something for the thirtieth or fortieth or one hundredth time and have it become quite numbing and deadening. Habit sometimes smothers life. But when you experience this for the first time, it can be quite overwhelming and awesome.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
S.s irrepressible power of synesthesia
“In an astonishing and now-famous case study entitled The Mind of a Mnemonist, [the Russian neurologist A.R.] Luria writes of a man named Shereshevskii, whom he designates S. . . .
S.s irrepressible power of synesthesia . . . compelled him to see and even taste words, numbers, and sounds. According to Luria, Presented with a tone pitched at 250 cycles per second and having an amplitute of 64 decibels, S. saw a velvet cord with fibers jutting out on all sides. The cord was tinged with a delicate, pleasant, pink-orange hue. And each word and number elicited a graphic image. In S.s own words: When I hear the word green, a green flowerpot appears; with the word red I see a man in a red shirt coing toward me.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
light as a bird
“James Fernandez writes that after partaking of the eboka root, which is a hallucinogen, the initiate of the Bwiti cult escapes his corporeal reality, becomes light as a bird, sees his dead, and flies high above the crowds of those who have not had the fortune to know eboka. He goes beyond the village of the dead and passes great rivers or crossroads and sometimes changes color as he comes into contact with the great gods.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
Tell me, if a man were to light a lamp, could it provide light the whole night long
“In the Buddhist scriptures, [there is] a famous dialogue between a king named Milinda and the Buddhist sage Nagesena. The king asked Nagesena this . . . question: When someone is reborn, is he the same as the one who just died, or is he different Nagasena replied: He is neither the same nor different. . . . Tell me, if a man were to light a lamp, could it provide light the whole night long The king said, Yes.
Nagasena asked: Is the flame then which burns in the first watch of the night the same as the one that burns in the second . . . or the last The king said, No. Nagasena asked again, Does that mean there is one lamp in the first watch of the night, another in the second, and another in the third The king answered, No, its because of that one lamp that the light shines all night. Then Nagasena said, Rebirth is much the same: one phenomenon arises and another stops, simultaneously. So the first act of consciousness in the new existence is neither the same as the last act of consciousness in the previous existence nor is it different.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
Mnemosyne
“Let us, however, give Mnemosyne her due. Because of her I am able to remember inspiring and rapturous communal momentsfor example, the Free Speech Movement rallies in Berkeley, California, in 1965 or the gathering in Central Park in 1980 commemorating the death of John Lennonas well as passionate and numinous personal moments. . . . It would have been insuperable for me to have forgotten lying flat on my back with arms outspread on a field filled with wooly harrow, buckwheat, and live forever overlooking the Pacific Ocean swelling against sculptured rocks in Nothern California on a glorious autumn afternoon, or many nights spent in a lake cottage in western Massachusetts watching the lakes ineffable changes as moon and clouds and stars passed by overhead and noticing the traveling lights of fireflies and tiny planes and their reflections in the water. I remember thinking: Like the flickering stars, the fireflys light leaves a memory of itself.”
—Jonathan Cott, from On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, 2005.
the Purkinje shift
“Walking around Berkeley at dusk last week, we saw a hydrangea that almost seemed to glow. It was an example of the Purkinje shift. The effect is named after Johannes Purkinje, a nineteenth-century Bohemian physiologist who discovered the Purkinje cell and the Purkinje fiber; Purkinje also gave blood plasma its name and was the first person to classify fingerprints. Purkinje noted the shift when looking at an Oriental rug one evening; as dusk settled, some colors appeared to grow relatively brighter. In low-light conditions, the rod receptors in your eye (scotopic sensitivity) take over from the cone receptors (photopic sensitivity). Rods and cones are most sensitive to different wavelengths of light, so as it gets darker, we perceive colors as changing in brighteness as reds and oranges grow relatively dimmer and greens and blues grow relatively brighter. . . . Unlike many optical illusions . . . the Purkinje shift is not based upon fooling the brain. It’s a result of the mechanics of the eye. The eye doesn’t work the same way as mental models of the eye, as telescopes or cameras. It’s a slightly eerie notion; upon his discovery of the blind spot in 1668, Edme Mariotte was disturbed by the conflict between what he had just observed and Kepler’s model of the eye as a natural lens. It wasn’t until 1819 that scientific exploration of the blind spot really took off, both because nerves were poorly understood and because no one had a model of the eye good enough to displace Kepler’s that also accounted for the blind spot and the weird way it seemed to flow into the background. Nineteenth century philosophy, of all things, began to provide this model. Schopenhauer sums it up at the beginning of On Seeing and Colors: We see nothing, save through reason.”
the eloquent and apparently well-informed Steve at Snarkout.org, August 10, 2002. Thank you, dude!
Simultaneous contrast.
If a given color is observed simultaneously in varied colored environments, it will often look different. When seen against a magenta-like background a red will appear more orange than the same red seen in front of a yellow-red background. This varying perception of one and the same color is known as simultaneous contrast.
—Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.
Pure colors.
Colors which contain no other color. In the case of light, these are colors which are determined by one wavelength only.
—Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.
Primary colors.
Colors obtained by artists or scientists as the basis of mixtures to obtain other colors (secondary or tertiary colors). Primary colors cannot be reduced further and are the basis of all color systems. Each system starts out with its own primary colors.
—Color Systems in Art and Science, edited by Klaus Stromer, translated from the German by Randy Cassada, 1999.