Selective memory

Before I leave a place, I try to imagine how I will remember it.

The weekend before last, I had the chance to experience the ocean the way I love it best—when the sky is too black to see much of anything but the sound of the waves against the rocks is vivid enough.                

But the wind off the water can chill, and my chattering set of teeth broke the still of the night. The boy sitting next to me rubbed my hands between his palms as if trying to start a fire. He paused when he rediscovered the smooth string of the friendship bracelet our respective circles of friends had exchanged—something to remember our time together by.                

In that moment, I doubted I would forget either way.

He was a friend of mine, but we had met just the night before, and my flight back to Madrid was the next day. It was not an unusual shelf life for a study abroad friendship. The people are such a central part of any place you visit, yet oftentimes two or three days is all you have.

You can snap a photo of yourself in front of the landmarks that merit glossy printing to assure future generations that you were indeed there. But it’s considerably harder to assure yourself that the ties you forged with the place, however fleeting, have meant something. We live and relive blindly, by memory.

Memory is such a curious thing. I’ve always been told I have a good one. So many of us wish we could to improve our mental capacity to retain. We compose songs, weigh down our desks with flashcards and shrink the space between our noses and the textbooks. But in a neuroscience course I took freshman year, the professor articulated a truth I think I have always understood: that the secret to remembering is to care.

Memories are pathways whose strength is reinforced with repetition. Each time a vintage experience is called to mind, the remembrance of it is further entrenched in our brains. If you have no interest in the words on the pages of your textbook, tough luck: rote memorization is likely your only recourse. But if something is truly important to you, take heart: you probably wouldn’t be able to forget it if you tried.                

Yet of course forgetting is integral to the act of remembering, and all memories are vast simplifications. Judging by my memories, Duke is reduced to an enchanted forest of eternal spring, where I spend my days writing to the tune of the Chapel bells, savoring Loco Pops on the plaza and dodging Frisbees on the quad. These are authentic fragments of campus life—but I know they don’t add up to a full portrait of what Duke is to me because if they did, I would have never felt the need to leave.                

When I look back on this semester in Spain, there is a danger that my memory will exercise similar creative reign. Yet I hope the version of this experience I carry with me is not overly romanticized, for it would surely be cheapened.

This semester has been a wonderful one. Yet the Spanish way of life is something I have had to learn by means of perseverance and optimism. I do not want my memory to discount the effort that underpins the happiness that I have found because it is for me a point of pride.

It’s hard to be one of just seven Duke undergraduates in the entire country. Walls in Spanish homes are paper-thin, and my wake-up call has been no later than whenever the first member of my host family decides to rise. And, above all, there has been a lot of rain—at least once a week, without fail. That, I know, has been seared into my brain.

When the clouds parted yesterday, I decided to finally see a bull-fight, an experience that is universally described as unforgettable.

The mere thought of the event makes me sick. But everyone says you can’t leave Spain without seeing one, and my flight home is discomfortingly near, so I decided to bite the bullet. At the very least, it was something to tell my grandchildren about, I reasoned. The price was right—just two euros for a seat in the uppermost balcony, as close to the gore as I could stomach.

A man with reptilian skin working a concession stand—as he has every Sunday in bullfighting season for more years than he can remember—assured me that a promising young matador was in town today and it would be a good fight.  I buried my fingernails in my palms just the same.  

Yet before I could take my seat, I was greeted with unexpected news: the fight had been canceled due to weather concerns. I could have kissed the rain-soaked ground beneath my feet.                

I walked away with nothing to show for the experience, save a wallet that was two euros lighter. But I breathed a sigh of relief, calmed by the knowledge that the bulls would live to see another week and even by the time you read this, my last column, I will still have 22 days left in this strangely beautiful place.

Julia Love is a Trinity junior. This is her final column of the semester.