Memory Muscles

About a year ago, I was getting increasingly frustrated and concerned by my failing memory. I was constantly losing my keys, my phone, water bottle, etc. And when I'd go to look for something, I'd forget what I was looking for! Or I'd walk into a room and not remember why I'd walked in there.

Several years before, I'd taken voice lessons and, struggle as I might, I could not memorize the songs I was learning. I would hit the same wall with pieces I was learning on piano. And with people, I'd forget names. With books, I'd get to the end and not remember what I'd read.

Old age, I guess. But I wasn't happy because I'd once had an excellent memory. An uncannily excellent memory. My brain was a bank of phone numbers, birthdays, names, faces, directions, and more. When I was 14 and we were starting "A Tale of Two Cities" in English I, Mrs. Edwards told us never to forget that Gaspard was the name of the tall joker who wrote "Blood" on the wall. Of course, she was hinting that it would be on the test. But I took her literally, and to this day, I remember Gaston's name and what he did.

Anyway. My memory.

I decided to start memorizing things as a way of regaining my memory "muscles." I wasn't sure if memorizing short poems would work for the mind the same way curls work for the biceps, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

I started with short-ish poems, including Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" and Blake's "The Tyger." Standard stuff. But they were too easy. I've read and studied those poems all my life, so they were already in my brain. So I memorized them quickly.

I also re-memorized a longer poem, Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Big fun. But I'd memorized it on my Appalachian Trail thru-hike, and, like the shorter poems, it was already stored in my brain somewhere. So it was more of a retrieving than a building-up of memory muscles. (Though the practice of retrieving memories was, I'm sure, good for my brain too.)

So I decided to do something really challenging and memorize the book of Philippians. It took me three days to memorize the first verse and three months to get the whole book, but I did it!

So I moved on to Ephesians. Four months.

Then I tried the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). I got about halfway through Matthew 6, and my brain said, "No more. We're done here." I'd been trying to keep both Philippians and Ephesians in my memory at the same time, and I'd managed to exhaust my poor mind. I couldn't do it anymore.

So I took a break. I can't memorize any of these books/passages from the Bible now, or at least not perfectly. But they're in the same memory/mind-realm as the poems I'd retrieved before. And that's good.

But I've decided to start memorizing again. I really love memorizing things from the Bible because I end up meditating on them as I repeat them over and over, weighing the words, listening to the sound of them. But I also want to memorize some longer poems that I love--such as Wordsworth's "Lines Written above Tintern Abbey," Keats's "To Autumn," and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"--poems that will be partial (maybe full) retrievals because I've loved them for most of my life.

I'm starting now with Psalm 139, and then I will likely do Keats's "To Autumn" next (just in time for autumn). And then back to, likely, something in Psalms. Rather than learn one brand-new passage/book/poem after another, I'll go back and forth between new material and retrievals. That might be a little easier on the ol' noggin.

How has this affected my failing memory? Well, it doesn't seem to be failing anymore! I haven't lost my keys in many months, and I'm much better about not losing other things. And it's rare that I walk into a room and forget why I'm there. So I think I can call my little memorization project a success. I hope to continue it for many years to come.