The Power of Memory (Clusters)

I set out early this morning to walk the dogs and found the air crisp and cool, the sky clean and bright. The moist leaves sat clumped on the grass and naked in the street; they smelled like a bowl of soggy corn flakes that had been forgotten, abandoned for a cartoon or a pop tart. The smell, the cold, the clear light of the moment, all compiled, created a texture of memory that forced me out of the present moment, somewhere else.

Stanislov Grof, in his book The Holotropic Mind, discussed the concept of what I call memory clusters. Like an accordion of moments, events in our lives are grouped together at a particular point with similar frequencies, emotional levels and essentially, experiential textures.

For example, I lived in Santa Fe, NM for 9 years and the smell of roasting chili peppers along the road wherever I went during the months of Sept/Oct is indelibly inscribed in my consciousness. I also, however, associate the smell with intensity, prosperity, and sensuality due to a number of events that “seemed” to occur in autumn while I lived there, specifically some new relationships, work successes and the purchase of real estate.As a teen, I ran cross-country each fall and have numerous memories of padding half naked through wet leaves, through the crisp morning air, up and down the hills of Bear Mountain State Park. I felt free, alive, and determined.

This morning’s combination of leaves, smells and crisp fall air brought me right back to the autumn of 1987, a month before my 17th birthday. I managed my way up to Williamstown, MA for a long week-end where I hung out and interviewed at my number one college choice, Williams College. At the time, it was considered the hardest liberal arts school to get into and I planned to apply Early Decision. I wanted to go there so badly I could taste it. My week-end of beer, girls and rugby made it even more clear. In fact, in the middle of a crashed dorm room party that my rugby host smuggled me into, one of the students raised his plastic cup of beer and definitively announced: “Man, you’ve GOT to come here. You’re awesome.”

Can you believe the ego inflation I experienced as I threw on my new, thick, sweatshirt and headed home to NY, a giant purple “W” caressing/protecting/blocking my heart? At the top of my game, the apex of my world, I rolled down the windows of my old blue Nissan and let the cold, matted air redden my cheeks as I worked off the hangover, speeding down the Taconic Parkway so fast it made the windshield vibrate…

Several months later I received a “wait list” letter and while I was rattled by the delay of my destiny ride back to Williamstown, I had every expectation of being fully accepted in the spring.

Spring arrived, and with it, the stack of college envelopes. “As you might have heard, this has been a record setting year here for Williams College. We regret to inform you…”

It was the first major disappointment from the outside world I experienced, but it felt like the end of the world at the time. I had pictured my life as an adult beginning with a Williams College experience. I had not planned an alternative vision from which to weave my life story. I felt more than defeated, I felt wrong. As if there was a glitch in the Matrix and somehow the world just didn’t work the same anymore.

There is a different memory cluster associated with the demolition of my 17 year old’s expectation that I’d go to Williams. Thank God, really. There is something so profoundly perfect and beautiful and eternally hopeful about the Autumn Leaves Cluster. It is the moment when life feels right; when people think I’m wonderful and the timing of things work. It is the moment of transcendent hope that I am able to access when I need inner strength and support in order to accomplish or succeed. And like an accordion, I rely on the power and intention of dozens of similar events, feelings and experiences.

So, while I never made it back to Williams College, I found my way into many other streams of thought and consciousness. I constructed even more interesting, provocative, transcendent scenarios to play out in my 40 years… Some of which are still in motion. What do you think/smell/feel/remember/imagine right now?