211 Grace Notes

Ghost in the Orchard. Four inches from done. I’d stare at the cable chart and the tiny squares would dance. Close my eyes. Open them. Over and over. The hands that made those cables could not remember how cables worked.

Endel Tulving‘s encoding specificity principle. Godden and Baddeley’s divers learning words underwater. Jonathan Spence‘s memory palace. And 60% of the total surface of our brains committed to our hands.

My second sweater - bricky red, carnelian buttons, the physical therapist who inadvertently retired it - became the Gaia Jacket from Jean Moss’s Sculptured Knits. Which became the red cabled vest I’m knitting now. Thirty years of memory in the same wool.

Serotonin stripped the filters. Melatonin locked the repair. Dopamine lit the paths. Norepinephrine broke the bridge. Memory is where it all comes home.

Music: Rore, Arrival; Waveshaper, Our Time (Instrumental)

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