One of these days, I was struck by a tremendous longing. While reading and taking notes, I felt an overwhelming longing for my grandfather, who passed away more than 20 years ago. I paused briefly and let myself be hit by this nostalgic wave, which took me to the past in a few seconds. I soon wondered which element of the gift had provoked such a sudden trip.
The only thing that occurred to me was that I had written down the year of my birth and perhaps that, just that, would have been enough to trigger memories of such a distant past in me. I'll never know for sure, but this feeling has intrigued me for a long time.
Several times, I find myself remembering someone or some event in the most (apparently) disconnected and ordinary moments. Doing domestic activities, driving, crossing the street, reading a book, I remember someone I haven't seen for many years, someone with whom I haven't even been close, people who for some fortuitous reason crossed my path. An instant of the present capable of leading up to a scene from the past, no matter how far back it is in time or space.
But the most fascinating situations are those like this recent one, in which I remember someone very close and I am transported to a certain place, at a specific time. More than that, I feel the atmosphere of that moment, an atmosphere, something subjective and vivid, a synesthesia, almost as if I could take time in my hands.
In the text Note on the "Magic Block" , from 1925, Freud makes an analogy between the homonymous toy and the perceptive psychic apparatus. In the device in question, there is a small wax board on which there is a thin, translucent sheet. The latter has two layers, a transparent celluloid film and another that is waxed paper. One does not draw on the Block by depositing something on the sheet, as with a pencil or chalk, but by making grooves, marking the surface with a sharp object. If you want to erase what has been drawn or written, just lift the double sheet and the space is available for new strokes.
Freud points out that when one observes the Magic Block closely, "(...) it is easy to see that the lasting trace of what was written remains on the wax tablet and can be read with adequate lighting (p. 272, ed. Cia das Letras)". The registrations remain there. At this point he draws a comparison with the psychic apparatus, saying that the layer that first receives the stimuli would be like the perceptual-conscious system, which does not maintain lasting traces. The bases of memories and recollections are found in other, more "deep" systems.
In this way, events that seem to have been forgotten are actually recorded in another layer. These are what he calls "mnemonic traces". In this way, nothing would be forgotten. Despite this, Freud reminds us that such traits are not unalterable. He states that our psychic apparatus:
(...) it has an unlimited capacity to receive new perceptions and creates lasting - but not immutable - mnemonic traces of them (p. 269, edition Cia das Letras).
Changeable and enduring, memory holds extraordinary potential. A current element promotes a seam between present and past, in the same way that Freud states that past, present and future are intertwined by the thread of desire. One might think, then, that just as a trickle of water tends to always pass through where a watercourse has already passed, through the furrows left in the earth; A similar process occurs with memory. A component of the present puts into action mnemonic traces, bringing out reminiscences.
To a certain extent, we already have, then, the ability to travel in time. Perhaps we cannot activate such a capacity at will, but our own memory, this truly magical block, holds in itself a time tunnel, capable of taking us to the most distant places and times, in a matter of seconds. I still don't know of a more powerful means of transport.
