At 93, so deep in dementia that she didn't remember any details of her life, my mother somehow still knew songs. Floyd Skloot More Quotes by Floyd Skloot More Quotes From Floyd Skloot When memories fade, can one ever really return home? Floyd Skloot fade return home memories If I don't write down a thought - or an image or a line of poetry - the instant it comes to mind, it vanishes, which explains why I have pens and notebooks in my pants and coat pockets, the car, the bicycle basket, on one or two desks in every room including bathrooms and the kitchen. Floyd Skloot bicycle car poetry mind Though my poems are about evenly split between traditionally formal work that uses rhyme and meter and classical structure, and work that is freer, I feel that the music of language remains at the core of it all. Sound, rhythm, repetition, compression - these elements of my poetry are also elements of my prose. Floyd Skloot feel music poetry work Dementia resembles delirium in the same way an ultra-marathon resembles a dash across the street. Same basic components, vastly different scale. If you've run delirium's course once or twice in your life, try to imagine a version that never ends. Floyd Skloot street you life way I've forgotten what it's like to remember. I've lost the mindless confidence that a moment, an idea, a thought will be there for me later, the bravado of breezing through experience in the certainty that it will become part of my self, part of my story. Floyd Skloot me moment confidence experience I think one of the primary themes in my work is the paradox of memory, at once fundamental to our sense of who we are and yet elusive, ever-changing, fragmentary. One way to look at this is to say that, therefore, we ourselves are elusive, ever-changing and fragmentary to ourselves. Floyd Skloot memory look think work Elaine Equi has been publishing her observant, often playful poetry for some 30 years, extending and deepening the range of her intrinsically wry voice. Floyd Skloot her some voice poetry 'The Art Student's War' is, at its core, a traditional American wartime love story. As such, it is timely and engrossing. By the end, all its principal characters 'have been to Hell and back.' Floyd Skloot hell love war art My wife is a painter, musician, and fiber artist. We married in 1993, and as she worked, I found that my reading about art was helping me understand what she was doing, just as seeing her work gave me a language with which to speak of art. Floyd Skloot me wife work art Neurologists have a host of clinical tests that let them observe what a brain-damaged patient can and cannot do. Floyd Skloot observe cannot host patient A new laboratory technique, positron emission tomography, uses radioactively labeled oxygen or glucose that essentially lights up specific and different areas of the brain being activated when a person speaks words or sees words or hears words, revealing the organic location for areas of behavioral malfunction. Floyd Skloot words new lights brain I used to be able to think. My brain's circuits were all connected, and I had spark, a quickness of mind that let me function well in the world. Floyd Skloot me mind brain world My cerebral cortex, the gray matter that MIT neuroscientist Steven Pinker likens to 'a large sheet of two-dimensional tissue that has been wadded up to fit inside the spherical skull,' is riddled instead of whole. Floyd Skloot inside up gray matter I became demented overnight. Sudden onset is one factor that distinguishes my form of dementia from the more common form associated with Alzheimer's disease. Floyd Skloot more alzheimer dementia disease Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes. Floyd Skloot nervous emotional intellectual brain In the spring of 1993, I married Beverly and moved to the woods. This is something I could never have imagined myself doing. Floyd Skloot doing never myself woods Through his long, productive career, Paul Theroux has mixed nonfiction books about exotic travel with novels set in exotic places. Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Honduras - he lives in and writes about places most of us never see. Floyd Skloot never see long travel Music seems hard-wired into our very being. It moves us, stirs us to action, sets us in motion, sticks in our memories and minds. Floyd Skloot being music action memories Most people imagine music playing in their heads, but some hallucinate music; some cannot sleep because of the soundtrack in their mind. Floyd Skloot music mind sleep people Irish novelist John Banville has a creepy, introverted imagination. Floyd Skloot irish introverted creepy imagination
