The Gentle GardenerI'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little way,To leave but tulips red and white behind me as I stray;I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd left behindBut roses and forget-me-nots for all who come to find.I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the flowers of earth,To leave a path where those who come should find but gentle mirth;And when at last I'm called upon to join the heavenly throngI'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign of wrong.And yet the cares are many and the hours of toil are few;There is not time enough on earth for all I'd like to do;But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the world to findSome little touch of beauty that my soul had left behind.

There, there, best to bring it all up,' she said. My memory was in shreds. Imagine a photograph cut into narrow strips then jumbled up. Everything is there, but you can't see the whole picture and even the strips have no bearing on reality. I did know I had consumed a large amount of alcohol. But I must have done something crazier than just being found drunk to have a nurse sitting by my bed. I thought it would be a good idea to say something and planned it for several seconds. 'She's all right,' I said. 'Who is?' asked the nurse. 'Alice. I'm all right now.' As I spoke I wondered if I had said something wrong. didn't sound like me. There were so many voices muttering in the background it was hard to tell.

Memory is igneous more than ingenious, igneous, and like granite, intrusive, heaved up within oneself, the whole range of one's life, mountains' forbidding height looming over the plains where one lives, mountains formed by the life already lived, but toward which one is always walking, one's own past ahead of him, seeking the improbable path already forged, this path back through oneself, this path we call the present tense, which becomes the continental divide when the tense shifts and the path is lost, path from which the walker emerges only to turn around and see the peaks pulled up by his feet, and the snowy pass, and alpine heights, where those stranded must sometime feed on themselves to survive, where sometimes, through the icy crust, the crocus blooms.

One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?" A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Long periods with no memory of abuse should not be regarded as evidence that the abuse did not occur. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 62(6), Dec 1994, 1167-1176

I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?""Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward."Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.p150

...I looked out the window at walls of moonlit cloud rising beside us as though we we were at the bottom of some, gray and ivory canyon, hung above the moon-smashed sea...But, with whatever hindsight, I suppose the reason that I want to close on a consideration of these words is that the moon-solid progress through high, drifting cumulus is — read them again — at the very opposite of what we perceive on a liquid's tilting and untilting top, and so becomes the other privileged pole among the images of this study, this essay, this memoir. Or perhaps, as it is only a clause whose syntactic place has been questioned by my own unscholarly researches, I merely want to fix it before it vanishes like water, like light, like the play between them we only suggest, but never master, with the word motion.

Já que não és bonita, deves salientar-te pela inteligência. Assim há se de conseguir mais na vida do que essas criaturinhas que contam com o sucesso do seu palminho de cara. Quero que aprendas também a tocar piano. Assim falou à minha mãe, que se contava entre as mulheres bonitas. Suspeitaria do mal que me causava?Pouco a pouco fui-me convencendo de ser feia. Olhando para o espelho via uma cara redonda, sem dúvida redonda em excesso, via olhos cinzentos (e não era o cinzento a cor mais feia de todas?), cabelo liso, sem ondas nem caracóis. No nariz curto já Anna repararam e gostava de puxar por ele. E como se me meteu na cabeça que os olhos eram demasiado pequenos, comecei a arregalá-los quando caminhava pelas ruas.

Here's what I think: when you're born, you're assigned a brain like you're assigned a desk, a nice desk, with plenty of pigeonholes and drawers and secret compartments. At the start, it's empty, and then you spend your life filling it up. You're the only one who understands the filing system, you amass some clutter, sure, but somehow it works: you're asked the capital of Oregon, and you say Salem; you want to remember your first-grade teacher's name, and there it is, Miss Fox. Then suddenly you're old, and though everything's still in your brain, it's crammed so tight that when you try to remember the name of the guy who does the upkeep on your lawn, your first childhood crush comes fluttering out, or the persistent smell of tomato soup in a certain Des Moines neighborhood.

Batley insisted that no cult existed but the jury found him guilty of 35 offences including 11 rapes. three indecent assaults, causing prostitution for personal gain, causing a child to have sex and inciting a child to have sex. The three women, who got Egyptian Eye of Horus tattoos apparently to show their allegiance to their organisation, were found guilty of sex-related charges. Young boys and girls were procured by cult members to take part in sex sessions, the trial heard. The group preyed on vulnerable youngsters, impelling them to join with veiled death threats. Batley was accused of forcing a number of his victims into prostitution. (Morris 2011) There are, after all, no paedophile rings; there is no ritual abuse; recovered memories cannot he trusted; not all victimization claims are legitimate. (Pratt 2009: 70)

Ficámos de novo sem assunto. Olhei à minha volta. O branco é triste como o negro, nunca antes o tinha sentido. (...) Não lhe acariciei a mão, nem lhe pus a minha sobre a testa, num gesto de consolação. Não fiz nada disso. E devia-o ter feito. Mas que a tristeza me dominou, que apeteceu chorar, por ver o meu pai tão doente, isso era verdade. Ele tê-lo-ia compreendido?Decerto é ilusão julgarmos que outras pessoas podem compartilhar dos nossos sentimentos através de simples palavras. Se eu dissesse que vejo na memória um homem encolhido na cadeira, metido num fato largo demais como se não pertencesse, com as mãos amarelo torcidas sobre o ventre e o olhar fixo no chão, alguém o verá como eu o vi?

Not the slow Hearse, where nod the sable plumes,     The Parian Statue, bending o'er the Urn,     The dark robe floating, the dejection worn     On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes     It pays Affection's debt, is due concern     To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mournFashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame     Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day,     She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame,     O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light and life, a reunited love!

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water. I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. 'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?' 'A heart. She should get a heart.' Little did they know. They are the tattoos.

En yakınımda oturan, arada sırada ateş istemek için küçük maşasıyla nargilenin camını tıklatan yaşlı adama yanaştım ve lafa girdim. Arkadaşlarımın Avrupalı olduklarını, şehrimizin eski hikayelerini merak ettiklerini, şehrimizin eski hikayelerini merak ettiklerini, eğer lütfedip anlatırlarsa hepimizi mutlu edeceklerini söyledim. Yaşlı adam uzun uzun yüzüme baktıktan sonra şöyle dedi: "Ne öğrenmek istiyorlar? İstanbul Boğazı'nın nasıl yapıldığını mı, altında kayıklarla gezilen sudan bir şehir olan eski mabedin esrarını mı yoksa köpeklerin hikayesini mi?

Who that has ever visited the borders of this classic sea, has not felt at the first sight of its waters a glow of reverent rapture akin to devotion, and an instinctive sensation of thanksgiving at being permitted to stand before these hallowed waves? All that concerns the Mediterranean is of the deepest interest to civilized man, for the history of its progress is the history of the development of the world; the memory of the great men who have lived and died around its banks; the recollection of the undying works that have come thence to delight us for ever; the story of patient research and brilliant discoveries connected with every physical phenomenon presented by its waves and currents, and with every order of creatures dwelling in and around its waters. The science of the Mediterranean is the epitome of the science of the world.

This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told: Somebody grew up, fell in love, and spent a winter with her lover in the country. This, of course, is the barest outline, and futile to discuss. It’s as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground while snow still falls fast. Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up: the black shroud over the pool. Love, in its shortest form, becomes a word. What I remember about all that time is one winter. The snow. Even now, saying “snow,” my lips move so that they kiss air. No mention has been made of the snowplow that seemed always to be there, scraping snow off our narrow road — an artery cleared, though neither of us could have said where the heart was.