Ray Bradbury and memories

At the beginning of this week, I finished Ray Bradbury's collection of essays: Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars. I didn't agree with all he had to say, but a lot of his ideas and descriptions of life as we know it really resonated with me — one in particular.

For those who didn't read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, (spoiler alert!) at the end, we encounter a group of book people. Books are otherwise banned, burned. So these people dedicate their lives to memorizing a book and discarding the physical copy, so that when things are better, they can bring it to paper once again. In an essay in Bradbury Speaks, he ponders the thought of what would come after. When they go to recite what they know and have it penned, how much of the original book is distorted? How much of the books have they misremembered?

Bradbury challenged others to consider how they may be misremembering their favorite books.

At first, my plan for this week's blog was to do just that — to describe the plots of books I loved to see what I misremembered. But (1) the majority of me free-time-reading the past few years has been devoted to autobiographies and (2) I wouldn't want to take away from anyone who intends to read whatever books I may have chosen.

That being said, it inspired me to dig deep and think of the books I read in middle school and high school — including Fahrenheit 451. Then, I got thinking even more generally about my own memories of that time. Just how many of our memories that we hold dear are misremembered? When I see a photo from six years ago and I'm brought back to the instant it was taken, how much of that was real?

While looking through some old photos, I came across a handful of photos from a spring break trip to Disney World with my parents and Meredith. Among a slew of other pictures that warmed my heart, I found one of myself in Magic Kingdom with the wind in my hair. (Fitting that this memory came into play this week, because I learned Bradbury was a huge fan of Disney.) When I saw that photo, I thought of how magical that trip was. I didn't think of all the little details behind that moment.

I think Meredith and I had traded cameras to capture photos of one another. I think the wind was brutal all day, and was so bitter that I shortly after that photo had to buy an extra sweatshirt to stay warm. I think we were in the Magic Kingdom and had just seen a parade — but I can't even say that with confidence.

It's still a great memory and a great series of photos from an even better trip. My point is that we don't always do our memories justice. We remember the highlight reel sometimes, or exclusively the pitfalls other times. Much like forgetting the minor plots in our favorite books from years past, we don't always remember the things that make up what we hold dear. As far as I'm concerned, there are two solutions — enjoy the moment while you're in it. Then after, write it all down.