The Memory Palace by Mira Bartók is gorgeous.

I’ll say it again: gorgeous. I never thought I’d find a book where how it was written interested me more than its content (a staple of my recreational reading diet being sci-fi novels), so this was an illuminating experience. So lovingly crafted is each chapter, tailored exceptionally to fit her story, that it almost feels as if the whole thing were imagined, lived vicariously through the characters on the page. What I’m trying to say is that Bartók writes very well. Almost too well…

Wait a second. This is a memoir, isn’t it? Well, she writes about growing up living with her manic depressive, schizophrenic mom, and how that affected her as an adult, and how she dealt with her mom as an adult. That all seems pretty autobiographical. It’s not a boring account, by any means, but how did she make me care, right from the first few pages? I’ve read biographies about Dave Grohl and Bill Watterson, icons of worlds I had dreams of living in. I’ve read memoirs by Steve Martin and Anthony Bourdain, guys I occasionally crush on. Mira Bartók was a name completely new to me until I picked up this book, and if all she was selling were bittersweet memories of a saga maybe a fraction of the population can relate to, what kept me turning pages until I couldn’t keep my eyes open in morning’s earliest hours?

First of all, peoples’ memories aren’t what they used to be. Joshua Foer writes in Moonwalking With Einstein how, in the time before mass production of books was possible, scholars had no choice but to memorize the information passed on to them by their mentors: “Memory training was considered a centerpiece of classical education in the language arts, on par with grammar, logic and rhetoric. Students were taught not just what to remember, but how to remember it.” Nowadays, people may use any number of memory aides, depriving their brains of the mental exercises it would take in order to remember just about everything. As fickle as the memory is for most of us, Bartók still provides astoundingly vivid episodes from her childhood. Even more impressive is that she does this after suffering a brain injury from a car accident in 1999. If I try and remember anything from the year I was eight years old, I first have to figure out what grade I was in, from there deduce who my friends were, then look up those friends on Facebook so I can just ask them what they remember.

Bartók addresses the hazy nature of memories early and often. In the first chapter, titled “Subterranean World,” she begins to describe the psychological process that inspired her to record what she remembers of her mother:

            Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur. But neuroscientists say that is how memory works—it is complex and mercurial, a subterranean world that changes each time we drag something up from below. (29)

However, this understanding doesn’t stop her from second guessing her recollections in later chapters. When her and her mother are separated in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Bartók remembers not quite believing her mother could abandon her, but she knew, even at the age of nine, that her mother couldn’t be held completely responsible for her actions. She comes up with three scenarios that “could have happened,” never really committing to any one over the others. Two of the options outline a relieved yet guilt-stricken mother reuniting with her scared daughter, and a simple miscommunication, but everything leading up to this point suggests the third option as the true memory: “Cleveland is burning all around us in the sixties; the world is on fire—the river, the dying lake, my mother’s beautiful brain.”

The complexity of a web of memories fashioned thru ought a lifetime is incomprehensible. What clever Bartók does to arrange her book is utilize the very mnemonic device she uses to organize her memory. After finding hope for her untrustworthy memory in her knack for the visual arts, she builds herself a memory palace. This age-old technique allows a person to affix an image of what they’re trying to remember to a room in an imaginary building; by walking through the palace in her mind, Bartók is able to relive moments with her mother. Each chapter opens with a new addition to her palace, and as I said before, the narrative flows smoothly as Bartók connects images to memories and never is a metaphor forgotten. In the chapter called the “Eye of Goya,” we learn through a common interest that she is very much her mother’s daughter: “My mother and I loved artists and famous people who suffered from horrible afflictions, like Beethoven, Joan of Arc, Frida Kahlo, Anne Frank.”

So, whether or not Bartók has a really good memory is beside the point, because what she’s done with her memories provides the best evidence of her book being an exemplary work of creative nonfiction. Mimi Schwartz tells her students in the essay “Memoir? Fiction? Where’s the Line?” to “go for the emotional truth, that’s what matters.” This is exactly what Bartók does. I can accept the brilliantly crafted prose now that I see how the author used her gifted imagination to sharpen the edges of fuzzy memories. I don’t know why I doubted its authenticity in the first place.

Barbarians Are Closing In (Revision)

The barbarians are getting closer every second. They don’t leave until they get what they want; usually gold, but sometimes they take those left alive who would make decent slaves. My work is nearly complete. It must be hidden, kept safe. I regret to say that in my moment of panic I scratch out a line that may be deemed out of place next to the inspired illustrations of previous passages:

            shit. my boss. talk to ya later :-/

“You’re certainly not texting up here, right? You have work to do, and there’s customers to keep an eye on…?” Damn, she’d seen me slip the cell phone into my pocket.

“Oh yea, of course. Just, uh, checking the time. Thought our clock looked a little off,” I stammer.

“I see. Well, perhaps I can get Cody to move those boxes, since you have things to do up here…?” It’s sometimes difficult to tell if she’s still talking to an underling like me or to herself, but she’s ending her sentences like a question so I feel like I have to justify my existence.

“Mmmmyea! There’s this catalog to go through and a bit of labeling…books to shelve…” She nods, stares blankly, mutters something about what she came up there for, and leaves. It hadn’t been the first time my state of lazy comfort had been raided by a marauding micro-manager, and it wouldn’t be the last. I lean against the counter and pray my friend Cody makes it out alive.

My boss had only caught me in the middle of making plans for the weekend, a fate much gentler than those of the tenth century Celtic monks who were victims of Viking attacks. Believing a raid to be a challenge to battle rather than stealing, the Vikings looted villages for food, precious metals, livestock, people, and killed whoever stood in their way. Peaceful settlements like the Abbey of Kells in Ireland never stood a chance. However, the monks were able to keep their greatest work from being plundered: an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament.

The Book of Kells is a work by generations of master calligraphers, and the ultimate reference for the winding art motifs we’ve come to know as Celtic knots and crosses. It’s Ireland’s greatest national treasure and has been kept at Trinity College in Dublin since 1661, just out of reach of drooling bibliophiles and historians. This vibrant example of language was the result of patience, skill and divine inspiration. If everyone today had the motivation of the monks who withstood beatings from merciless killers, what would our writing look like?

Conversations thumbed between cell phones these days could never match the beauty of an illuminated manuscript. Text messages get deleted to make room for more text messages; perhaps such a disposable nature suppresses the urge to make them as enduring as anything hand-written. The Book of Kells is written in Latin, a language considered to be “dead.” If languages can die, how long before the short-hand elegance I’ve learned only from years of instant messaging gets put down? I can’t possibly let a younger, more adorable lingo warm the hearts of writers in my lifetime, so I prefer to view each instantaneous transmission as a new opportunity to link the vernacular of my generation with the careful passion of someone who has imported pigments from far off lands to mix into a brilliant ink.

The clever faces built from the available symbols on a keyboard—known as emoticons or smileys—retain a level of punctuation that, when understood, can convey a lot. Despite being knocked over onto their side, smileys offer facial expression where it normally isn’t seen.

Hey! Whats up? :)

The plain smile shows that I’m genuinely interested in how a person’s day was, even if what I really want is to get on their good side so I can ask them to drive somewhere.

Wow thats awesome! :D

I’ll use the grin if, and only if, I think the person is going to share any of their awesome with me.

:(

That’s sad; I have been upset. Maybe they’re keeping that awesome all to their self.

:-*

Kisses go to the one I love. End of story.

;-)

However, I am generous with my winks….

:P

and the sarcastic sticking out of the tongue.

Emoticons illuminate the tiny backlit screens that glow against our faces in shadowy corners. They articulate feeling in a way that the limited field of text messaging can’t, and since texting has become such a popular way of communicating, we need all the varied methods of expression we can get. The monks at the Abby of Kells knew the power of illustration, knew that it could lift up the word of God so that even those who could not read could be aware of the Almighty. Plus, it states in the Bible that God made humans in his likeness; why squint to make out the face of Jesus in rock formations and grilled cheese sandwiches when it can easily be constructed from an assortment of punctuation marks?

Texting has a chokehold on our culture. If people really are losing the ability to socialize face-to-face, we can at least still write meaningful things to each other.

:) (Workshop Essay)

“Shrimp dinner tomorrow?” she asks with a parenthesis smile.

“Sounds great,” I exclaim with a wide grin, “Are you going to be hungry tonight?”

“No,” she admits, mouth an apologetic slash, “You will be tho!”

“Mhm! I’m going to devour you,” I throw a halo above my head for good measure.

Her lips form a capital O before shifting into that perfectly curved smile. She’s a master of playing it cool.

Conversations thumbed between cell phones these days never match the poetry of, say, letters written by Civil War soldiers to their loved ones in the late eighteen hundreds, but that doesn’t mean any less thought should go into them.

Ever since the dawn of man there have been people who’ve had something to say, though, not necessarily out loud. Long before the correspondences of Union and Confederate soldiers, and even longer before text messages, people were tapping out words on stone tablets or scratching them over papyrus. Laws, histories, poems, contracts, anything ancient note takers wanted records of would be inscribed on material that could be preserved for ages. In a time before data plans, hot spots and an ever growing amount of Gs, Mother Nature was the only mobile provider.

No doubt written language has come a long way since the pictographs that first conveyed meaning within early societies, yet it has always been said that history has a way of repeating itself. Emoticons, abbreviations or icons used on computer networks, specifically Smileys, may someday become the hieroglyphics that archaeological theses are written about. This idea alone drives me to compose texts (of the cell phone variety) that express exactly what I mean with the kind of short-hand elegance learned only from years of instant messaging.

To some lack-luster texters, punctuation has been devalued to a mere forgotten courtesy. Crude, single sentence memos hold the greatest chances of being misconstrued, so if this is how you prefer to communicate, you may have already had problems. It’s heartbreaking to see such a paltry response from someone you were eager to here from. Punctuation is defined as using “marks or characters in writing or printing in order to separate elements and make the meaning clear,” and how hard could it be to spice up your message with one or two extra characters?

The clever faces built from the available symbols on the keyboard are the next level of punctuation one can utilize to communicate how they feel. Despite being knocked over onto their side, Smileys offer facial expression where it normally isn’t seen. There’s the plain :) that makes you glad to have a friend. A grinning :D lets you know that you’ve brightened someone’s day by making them laugh. :( isn’t something you enjoy seeing, but people get sad sometimes. Hopefully you can turn that conversation around so they’re back to sending :-* and ;-). These are the simplest examples; there are a myriad of combinations and illustrations, but it doesn’t take jaw-dropping creativity to illuminate the tiny backlit manuscript that glows against your face in the back of a classroom :-O.

Text messages get deleted to make room for more text messages; perhaps such a disposable nature suppresses the urge to make them as enduring as a hand-written letter. It’s depressing to think about, so I prefer to view each instantaneous transmission as a new opportunity to link the vernacular of my generation with the careful passion of an old-fashioned gentleman caller.