There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine.

From “Ulysses” by James Joyce

In this elegant paragraph, James Joyce points out the remarkable nature of our memory: “evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait.” These recorded scenes come to the fore when we least expect. We don’t suppress so much the recall of our sins or evil memory as we do the recollection of our bad experiences.  In my upcoming non-fiction book, “Afterlife Tracks” I write:

“The episode remained recorded in the gracious memory of her mind forever as something beautiful to recall.  This is, after all, the part of our brain that tends to erase the unkind nature of events and firmly imprints only the good aspects of them. Our minds know how to indulge us with the most pleasant memories.”

In “The Stranger’s Enigma,” I allude to the forgotten scenes that wake up during sleep: “My dreams evoke images from my childhood, where nostalgia rules—parents, hometown, neighborhood, home, late and living relatives, toys, school, celebrations. The evoked events often extend as far back as my first three years of life, which while awake, I remember poorly or don’t recall at all.”