Memory

Looking back at those week-ends they seem like beads on a string, two big glittering ones to start with, then a succession of small unimportant ones, then another brilliant one to end. But that is just the lazy memory, because as soon as I start to think about the last week-end, I realize that there must have been incidents during the intervening week-ends that led up to it. But I can't remember, it's all gone. And I get exasperated, trying to remember - it's like wrestling with an obstinate other-self who insists on its own kind of privacy. Yet it's all there in my brain if only I could get at it. I am appalled at how much I didn't notice, living inside the subjective highly-coloured mist. How do I know that what I 'remember' was what was important? What I remember was chosen by myself, of twenty years ago. I don't know what this self of now would choose.

Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook