Memory and the Commutor

Objectivity: if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it -- there is still a sound.
Relativity: if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it -- there is no sound.
If we died and no one was there to see it, does that mean we never died? You gotta be kidding.
I'd like to believe in Objective beauty, truth and values. Even if you feel that nobody knows or understand how you feel, and nobody cares that you exist, you are still there, you exist, you can't deny or ignore your existence and all the feelings that come with it. When this blog dies and we stop blogging, do we exist less because no one else is going to know we existed?

At the bookstore, I saw a book i was sure I had read before. I opened it and kept reading... page 1...,32..., 76..., 132...still not a word to trigger the memory. "Am I having dementia?" I asked myself. When i reached home, i got an email from a friend whom i haven't heard for five years. His version of my self were nicer than I remembered myself to be. I laughed.

One study says that "words only account for 8% of communication." As I read the email from my friend, I don't know 92% of what he is actually thinking. As we blog here, we don't see, hear or feel the other 92% of our friends' world. If we keep staying in the world of text, emails, internet.. essentially, we ignore the other 92% of our communication abilities and of reality.

I was riding in a bus once when my sewing teacher came on board and sat right next to me. She is very old --dementia -- i always felt the only thing she has left in her memory are sewing patterns. Our shoulders were touching and I could smell her breath, but i didn't speak or say hello because I thought she probably doesn't remember me anymore -- I got down the bus with that feeling in my gut telling me I might never meet her again.

I had that feeling with my friend five years ago. But then, here is the email. Not exactly a "meeting" but still, it feels like a friendly ghost had risen to stir some vague cloudy memories I had forgotten, or perhaps i haven't -- perhaps the true self we thought we have forgotten is still somewhere in our memory inbox, waiting to be retrieved, like the book you thought you've read before.