At about 10 o'clock this morning, I cut into a pomegranate that my mother-in-law had given me, and had been sitting in the fruit bowl for a while.
As soon as I saw those bright red seeds, a memory from my childhood came flooding back. I remembered vividly eating pomegranates with a pin, the type my Grandma had in her sewing box. In hindsight, I suppose it was a little dangerous, sharp pins in my playful hands, which was perhaps, much of the appeal. In childhood, you have the time and desire to adopt such practices. How times change. Pomegranates have never been, or will be, a favorite of mine purely because they are just way too messy and difficult to eat for my liking. But eating them with a pin? That's a completely different experience, especially when you're only 10 years old.
It occurred to me that moments like this happen every day. Moments that trigger flashbacks to my past. Stories that make good scrapbooking material. As I have gone through the process of writing AlbumMagic, I have been more aware of my scrapbooking practices, and one of the questions that I keep asking myself lately, is how do you, or can you, trigger memories to create solid and meaningful content for your scrapbooks? I haven't yet found an answer I'm content with.
I concluded today, that the successful triggering of memories is not something you can control. You can increase your chances of experiencing flashbacks by surrounding yourself with the people and things from your past. These could include, the place where you grew up, the toys you played with, the foods you ate, the music you listened to and TV shows you watched.
I personally find I have a better chance of experiencing flashbacks to my past, when:
- I head to an antiques or second-hand store
- I spend time on Ebay or Etsy
- I'm around my family or old friends
- I listen to music or watch old TV shows
- I look at old photographs
- I watch old TV shows
- I revisit places from my past
- I encounter familiar smell, like cut grass
- A familiar sound, like jets flying low over my house
Notice, how all these experiences are based on a connection between my 5 basic senses (sight, smell, taste, sound and touch), and a familiarity to a tangible or intangible *object* or *subject*. Once these connections are made, they reside within my memory, where some are more accessible than others. My memory is jogged by the commonalities between my past and present.
We cannot control or predict which of those memories will come flooding back first, or in what manner it will happen. Nor can we control how to trigger these memories. What we can do, however, is be aware of these flashbacks when they happen, and make a point of making note of them, in whatever way works for you. By hand, via computer or voice memo.
This I am content with.
Those of you starting AlbumMagic tomorrow will find this particularly applicable and helpful in lesson 2.
