Digression on memory

I got a tape recorder and I talked for awhile about my hanami.  Here is one of my many digressions.  It's about memory.  TAPE 13:00.  A digression.

Your memory is so important to you, your memories are yourself.  Without your memories you have nothing left.  A long, long time ago I knew an old lady.  She used to feed possums.  She loved to read.  She lived near the library in Indooroopilly, in Queensland, Australia.  She was a kind of friend of mine.  She used to drive me around and I used to swap books with her.  I borrowed some books off her and she borrowed some books off me.  But more or less, I borrowed her books and I didn’t give them back.  I used to go around there and see her.  She taught yoga to old people so she was kind of an amazing person.  But she used to talk about memory like it was something that you wanted to get away from.  She wanted to live completely in the present moment and that was what was real.  So, if your family is not in the room with you, they don’t exist.  It doesn’t matter where they are, or what they’re doing, if they’re not in the room with you, they’re not real.  If they’re not in the room with you, they don’t exist.  How the hell could that be true? There’s got to be a difference between your brother being in China and having a banquet and winning a million dollars, and him falling off a building and breaking his leg.  All of these could be equally real.  Whether you know it or not, they could all be equally real.  It’s not just my memories of things that matter, its actually the world itself.  I don’t believe in living through this lens that it’s only the present that matters and it’s my present that matters the  most.  How could that be possibly true?  Why would my present matter more than anyone else’s on the planet?  Why would my present matter more than your present? You are the reader, right.  I think my present matters more than your present, you think your present matters more than my present.  Where are we with that?  How does it make any sense?  What if we just say, they both matter equally, its just that perspective leads us to think that my present is more important than your present.  My life is more important than your life.  They are both of equal value its just that different people have them.  That’s true.