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I watched a documentary about a man with a thirty second memory. He was a music composer from Surrey, a man of great creativity and intellect. He came down with a flu something like 25 years ago, when he was in his 20s and newly married, and brain damage from the resulting high fever wiped out his ability to remember his past. Any of it. And he cannot move anything from short-term to long-term memory, precluding the formation of any new memories.

He now rides along on an island of time roughly 30 seconds long, and cannot remember anything or anyone from his past, except for his wife. And when she visits him (he must live institutionally now), he is always surprised how much older she looks and thinks it's also (paradoxically) the first time he's ever seen her. In fact, he's continually convinced that he's only 'just now' woken up from a long sleep. He writes compulsively in a journal that's been set up for him saying things like "NOW I am awake, I don't know who or what wrote the last entry but it was not me!" This gets scratched out within minutes with an 'X' placed next to it and something very similar will be written on the next line.

And so his life goes, tragically, unimaginably. When asked how he feels he says he feels he's just woken up, he's never seen a human being in his life, or been outside this room. When asked what he remembers before the present, he appears confused, then compares it to death. He says, "You don't remember anything when you're dead, do you? There you have it. I must be dead." I am reminded of the integral part memory and the awareness of time's passage plays in our picture of reality. What it contributes to our sense of being alive, being human. But mostly...

I cannot watch this documentary again or think on it too deeply without risking throwing myself into one of those near-inescapable loops of insanity.