Strung Together

I've been reading An Imaginary Life and the thing that keeps coming to my notice is how he seems to remember things. I remember Prof. Sexson saying that everyone knows everything, except that we've forgotten it. Ovid in the story is in the process of remembering all of those things that we have forgotten. Near the beginning he tells of a dream where centaurs visit him and say a word to him. When he awakes, he cries out that word: "I have tried to remember that word, but the sound has sunk back into my sleep. If I could recall that sound, and speak the word again, I think I would know what it is I have named, what it is that I have encountered" (pg. 25). Later he comes upon a scarlet poppy and remembers colors and flowers that he had forgotten from his childhood. He says, "We give the gods a name and they quicken in us, they rise in their glory and power and majesty out of minds, they move forth to act in the world beyon, changing us and it. So it is that the beings we are in process of becoming will be drawn out of us. We have only to find the name and let its illumination fill us. Beginning, as always, with what is simple" (pg. 32). To remember all there is to know about this world and ourselves, we have to start with the little things, the simple things. Ideas about marriage and love and death can open us and remind us of all that we are suppose to know. The things that we are learning about in class are the simple things. We don't think about this stuff all the time or never, in fact, because we are trained to believe that it is unimportant. We are suppose to live in the here and now. We are to enjoy life to the fullest without thinking about the past because the past is irrelevant. The sad thing is that we will never be able to live life to the fullest without taking into consideration the past because the past is where all of the answers lie. David Malouf's character has to remember his childhood for him to accept and embrace fully his life in exile. If he were to only remember his adult life in Rome, he would never be able to understand his present. We are the same as that character. We must remember the past, even going beyond our childhoods, to be able to understand our present.