Memory is essential for remembering where you parked your car yesterday. And to understand the working of the washing machine. If you ask a poet what memory is for, he won’t give you these examples, perhaps because poets don’t drive cars or use washing machines. Maybe he’ll talk to you about the importance of memory in maintaining one’s identity or building an intimate history of existence, I don’t know, but he will certainly underestimate its usefulness in these domestic issues we’re still in. risk your idea of who you are. The day I forgot the ratatouille recipe, you can be sure that piece of me, whatever it was, evaporated. It may still be so when you delete your sibling’s birthday, or even your father’s or mother’s birthday, but when you don’t remember (if you’ve learned) to ride a bike, then something serious happens, so serious that it’s okay to go to a neurologist.
