As it relates to survival, memory is a particular type of perception; it is not an accurate imprint of an event. In this sense, it is the process by which the organism creates a gestalt (functional unit) of the experience. This gestalt can be a faithful representation of an actual event or it can just as easily be a rendering consisting of unrelated data from several different events -- in other words, a mosaic.-Peter Levine, from Waking the Tiger (Healing Trauma)
My parents' bedroom is a location I cannot describe in a single sitting. While at certain speaking or writing takes I can catch the plants in the window straight ahead and my mother's closet, it is as if remembering the whole thing at once is simply too much. This is not surprising, considering that both of my parents died there, and I had some pretty traumatic experiences around both their lives and deaths in that room. Each time I go to write about one of their deaths, or even just a regular, non-traumatic scene taking place in that fifteen by fifteen square space, I seem to miss a few things that I then only catch later.
