It’s funny how the more that I write here, the more I find I have to say. Our brains are interesting that way: generally the more they do of something, they better they get at it. For example, how your memory works is the opposite of how a digital data store like a hard disk drive in a computer or a memory card in a camera works in that the more you memorize, the greater your capacity to memorize more things will be. That reminds me of a book I read (Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin) in which the author describes how he’s made by a strict tutor to memorize the phone book, after which his mind is so receptive to information that he absorbs anything with ease. That’s fiction, of course, but it seems like it would apply. Before I go about memorizing the phone book though, and that’s just like one of the kinds of things I would do, if you knew me, let me say that that there are plenty of other more productive ways of training memory. For example, learning a new language. Anyway, I have a very poor memory for facts to begin with, and I’ve gotten through life with no trouble thus far… But memorizing the phone book as a way to “prime” the mind for more useful information? That’s like how some people claim that if you want to learn a new language and have two years, you’d get better results by, rather than studying that single language straight through your two years, studying Esperanto for one year and then your target language for another year. (Esperanto is the Dvorak keyboard of languages.) So perhaps there is something to memorizing the phonebook. Study the phonebook for one year, then study Esperanto for another year, and finally study your target language for a third year. You’ll be a memory genius, able to absorb complex facts in a single glance!

Anyway, writing is fulfilling and gets easier with practice. And (along with eating oranges) it punctuates the endless hours I seem to be spending in front of the computer nowadays, working in Access or PHP or Access or PHP… Speaking of memory, I can’t remember whether I wrote and posted a “review” of the aforementioned book. And then there were those shoes which lived in a locker at the gym for four months, and I lost my cell phone recently (and didn’t get it back), and my wallet (but did get it back with all contents intact)… But then, I hadn’t lost my wallet in three years prior, so I figure I was due for a wallet-losing. (Everyone has to lose a wallet every once in a while.) But still, maybe I really ought to get started on the phone book right away.