Dreams and Reality
"Sometimes I can’t even distinguish between real memories and ones I’ve made up...Those are the ones that, if I close my eyes, I can’t remember the details of their faces, just a general feeling. Dreams work that way too."
-Jane Doe
I remember the beach, the sand, and the waves. A bird walks across the shallow water along the shore. But is it this particular beach at this particular time that I remember? Countless times I have been on a beach and seen a bird. I wonder what makes this memory distinct. What details from this time make this memory of a bird on a beach different from the other memories of birds on beaches? It is as if every memory similar to this one is clouded into one large memory of a bird, the sand, the water, and the beach.
Then I wonder whether or not the details of my memories are entirely accurate. I think of whether or not the image in my head is exactly what I saw that day. It could be a cliche of what I thought I saw. An image of "the beach" and what it would look like in a movie or on television. It might even be a dream or a mashup of my dreams along with my actual memories. What was real and what was imagined are indistinguishable. The lines between dream, memories, and reality all become blurred. One mass of details and colors remain.
http://autobot3264.blogspot.com/2012/09/number-one.html#comment-form
This blog post is a relatable topic about the confusion between real and false memories, and how they get mixed. I know that I have similar memories; ones I don’t entirely trust. The memory in the post involves a bird on a beach, and it includes a picture of the image described. The post mentions the theory that the memory could be a combination of every image of a bird on a beach the author has encountered, resulting in a sort of perfect, filmic beach with a bird. The picture used features a crane instead of a seagull, which would seem more appropriate, but it doesn’t much matter, especially since the author likely found the image on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteThe blog’s background image is of two people on a beach, which adds a lot to the text in the post. The reader never escapes the theme of the beach, the mysterious image that confounds the mind of the reader. It easily stays on the front burner.
I also appreciate the way it incorporates the quote from the other blog, and credits it to Jane Doe. It opens with the quote, which is always a very dramatic way to open anything. The quote sets up exactly the topic of the rest of the post, which is the assignment, but it makes it seem as if the quote was found and selected to fit the topic of the post afterwards, rather than the post being written based on the quote.