The other day a memory came back to me; one that I had lost.
I was strolling outside the mosque next to the Spice Bazaar at Eminonu. There were a lot of pigeons stuttering on the ground. In small booths sat frail, old women who sold pigeon food for 1 lira, each in a tiny acrylic saucer. I took out five liras and handed them to an old lady in one of the booths. On seeing this, the lady in the adjacent booth motioned to me to buy some bird feed from her as well. I took back some coins from the woman in the first booth and gave it to the second. The woman in the first booth said something in Turkish, glared at me, and, to put it mildly, made a face of disapproval. In that one second, she had transformed from a frail, old woman to someone who would have scratched my face, if she could. I remember I was positively frightened for a while.
I recalled that incident when I was working backwards on how much money I have spent, and where. This, for no particular reason.
Nice little snippet of lived reality in time and space.
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It happens, sometimes, doesn’t it, Daedalus?
We think of far away things that got buried in most uncanny times.
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Here’s a beautiful summary of Freud’s view on those little memories buried in the unconscious, from his comments to a patient:
“I then made some short observations upon … the fact that everything conscious was subject to a process of wearing-away, while what was unconscious was relatively unchangeable; and I illustrated my remarks by pointing to the antiques standing about in my room. They were, in fact, I said, only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had been their preservation.” (Freud, Case History of the Rat Man)
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“Their burial had been their preservation.” so wonderful!
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