Excerpted from the Gary Snyder’s article “Writers & the War Against Nature”:

I meant it. Please pass this message around. Thank you.

Today I came across a great article on spontaneous memories in The New York Times. Last week scientists found evidence that for the brain, remember is like reliving.

Some scientists argue that as humans evolved, cells possibly adapted to register a longer list of essential memories like: sounds, smells, time of day, chronology and when the experience occurred in relation to that experience.  They explained that as time passes, our memories consolidate, become buried and are put away and reshaped to be retrieved later.

“It’s a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel” of summoning past experiences.

Read it here.