Jamais Vu: Feeling Unfamiliar with Something Very Familiar - French
The playfulness of memory and swimming around the time's flow
A cruel inner rush happens to me every single day. Fortunately, knowing that I’m not alone gives me some relief; me and you are together in the bewildering weather conditions of the memory.
For someone like me, who goes through mood swings even within a day, forgetting things is not strange at all. I am used to it. Previously, every time I forgot something, I feared Alzheimer's and stood astonished and devastated, but today I am often relieved that I forget things. Because the lovely fact that the cosmos does not allow emptiness is quite valuable in this context. If I forget something, I make way for something new.
The world is brimming with novelty. If it is necessary to clean out the old stuff in the house and organize it when the time comes, surely so is our mind. But, happily, nature does not leave this organization to our will; she removes certain things to make room for other ones. How else might all of the world's abundant knowledge, emotions, and experiences be accommodated?
I am willing to have the ability to forget, as long as I do not forget my son, wife, family, and friends.
Not everyone approaches forgetting with the same joy and excitement that I do. A close friend of mine is occasionally astonished, concerned, or even secretly upset by the expressionlessness on my face when I discuss something she is certain I am familiar with. As I struggle to pick a reaction from a list of reactions, attempting to determine how to respond based on the situation, the fact that I have forgotten something becomes apparent without mercy. Don't be angry, I tell my friend; I just forgot, and it's natural. I merely made space for other things.
Because of nature's brutality to us, we often find it difficult to forget what we desire to forget. Insidious memories that nibble at us like bugs never go, and yet they take up so much room inside us that if we could just forget them, we could fill pages with new experiences. However, we tend to forget less bothersome things.
The French put so much importance on the concept of forgetting that there are at least three French words for forgetting and remembering.
Déjà vu, as most of us know, relates to the feeling of already knowing something I've just encountered. It's definitely something we've seen or felt before, but it's hazy now.
Jamais vu refers to not remembering anything that is actually fairly familiar. It's the antithesis of déjà vu.
There's also "presque vu". It involves being unable to recall and articulate information that you are aware of at the time. You cannot express what is on the tip of your tongue.
There are so much things about forgetting and remembering. Taking notes, writing stories or novels, making songs, giving presents, all to mark time, and make memories permanent.
Time is flowing in its authentic rhythm, and we try to catch some water, the best we can do.
I wish you a week full of learning novel things as much as remembering the old and sweet old memories.
— Gulsun
We are made of stories—that is, of words.
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