on memory

as a recorder, the brain does a notoriously wretched job. tragedies and humiliations seem to be etched most sharply, often with the most unbearable exactitude, while those memories we think we really need—the name of the acquaintance, the time of the appointment, the location of the car keys—have a habit of evaporating.

-memory, national geography-

would you choose to remember all, or to forget all? and why oh why do we have to remember all the tragedies and wretched things that happened to us in the past?
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