Does remembering begin in the present and work its way [[back]]? Or does it start at the [[beginning]]?I can imagine my hand holding each [[device]], a different size for each one, a different nail color, a different sleeve, a different sweatshirt, a different faceeven on the day of my birth, my mother ensured there was digital documentation. So, I never had to grow accustomed to seeing her face censored by the rectangular flip out screen of a [[camcorder]] or the flopping strap of a [[point and shoot]] camouflaging with her dark hair.
<img src= "https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1381A/production/_99889897_74fa66b3-518c-4600-ba15-0345cb6179f3.jpg">Sometimes I can't tell how much home videos inform the memory of my past experiences. I hold onto one that I know is not a video: my mom on the bed, yucking it up on our coiled cord white phone, my brother pacing in U's around the peninsula of the bed, and me following behind him, every time I took a step my full diaper would bump the backs of my thighs. . .I don't know how many times we walked around the bed. It could have been [[once]] or it could have been for two [[hours]]Pictures do show us some things that our eyes don't.
Printing real visions onto pixelated versions then back to paper ones in sticky laminated albums, cycling experiences in a [[trail|memory-based]] behind themselves.
<img src = "https://www.wikihow.com/images/thumb/3/3b/Eliminate-Red-Eye-With-Photoshop-CS3-Step-8-Version-3.jpg/aid626045-v4-728px-Eliminate-Red-Eye-With-Photoshop-CS3-Step-8-Version-3.jpg" width="300" height="240">I drew QWERTY squares and paper windows, taping them to the inside of a pencil box so I could flip it open and mime what I saw my dad doing. Except I couldn't close out of the windows, and my typing yielded no words. How I longed to break from this [[permanence]] and enter the world of [[temporality]].
<img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/6b0a34e59ef43c202189f5f21d786178/tumblr_oz9y30gvvT1qcnyvgo1_500.jpg">I held onto this memory, the yellow lamp light single-handedly combating the dark bedroom from the nightstand, the music of my mother's jovial laughter, the calm mystery of her conversation, the view of my brother's backside, the rhythm of my diaper [[beating|point and shoot]] my legs. I hold onto itI can get taken out of reality while mentally submerged in social media today, viewing the stories and [[timelines]] of other people, to many of whom I have no existing connection outside of digital media.The best Nintendo games were the ones in [[story mode|progress]]. The ones where I had to navigate my way through a mutable plot.
<img src="https://www.jvgs.net/accfblog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/RUU_3997-small.jpg"> The most exciting thing about unboxing my DS was the prospect of interacting with the bottom panel’s touch screen. I would slip the tiny stylus out of its built-in cave and just like writing with a pencil, but this time without the permanence of impressing an engraving on soft paper, I could draw and write and create what I wanted. The touch screen gave me more [[control]] than the iPods of the time and more [[intimacy]] than a computer keyboard or mouse.
<img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/a20fe350a6e740e318c7bd15897d2421/tumblr_nx1f5zgPsq1rykvaeo1_1280.jpg" width="400" height="275">My mother hit save on every day of my childhood. My days are archived if I ever want to [[relive|camcorder]] them. She handles storage so I can [[forge forward|progress]].When I got my Nintendo DS, the onus of [[saving|temporality]] the past onto memory cards fell on my irresponsible shoulders. I always had to remember to [[save|hours]] my progress on Sims2Pets in order to improve my practice as a veterinarian, [[saving]] up money to buy heartworm medicine and flea shampoo.If you forget to save or if you wrench out the memory card without thinking or if you can't muster the patience one day to wait for the completion notification you will have to [[restart|Recall in Reverse]]Kids at school used to say [[“watch this magic trick”]] and then stick a piece of mechanical pencil lead on the back of their index finger and pretend to make graphite lines with their finger. It was a generation of mechanical pencils. The intimacy of finger to paper had its allure before finger to screen made us intimately numb.
<img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/cc4feee2c20d319e36237e4d980434b7/tumblr_o53omoH8Ky1qcnyvgo1_500.jpg">Gaming was a little boy's world, and I had to hop down into it from the dark wood third floor of my doll house. But these games, for all the agency I had in them, continued to orient my interests toward [[motherhood]].the rounded corners of the square mousepad and dirty peeling, stretch layer on top. the strumming motion to get the mouse all the way left or all the way right because they built bigger screens before they built better mice. the red glow when you lifted it to see if it was really on. the scrolling ball that [[isolated|camcorder]] your middle finger from the others.
<img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/0e594a02a1335afe931320b23ab0673a/tumblr_o61372CauV1rxp48zo1_1280.jpg" width="350" height="325">I could get taken out of reality while mentally submerged in the world of a video game, living the stories and timelines of other characters, that had sort of [[tangential relationships|permanence]] to the ones I was living on a daily basis.My parents sensed my nurturing nature when I trained my Nintendog to recognize her name, shouting "LILY!" for hours into the DS microphone hole. But something always falls away when going from puppy [[to dog]].When I got older and tired of Nintendogs, the day I broke my hiatus and signed back in I was alerted that my dogs had run away because of my [[neglect|saving]]. Losing my Nintendogs made me feel like an unloving parent and, even worse, an animal abuser.
<img src="https://imgur.com/e6aa37cb-c617-492c-8e6b-0529fcdce40f">
One could say that I, as people always do, grew tired of the video game, but there is truth in the fact that I, the version of myself in this digital world, left five dogs to starve for long enough that they exercised their coded agency to pursue their survival out there in the zeroes and ones of my game.I had an iPhone before this iPhone, and the one before that I named Samantha.
That was freshman year of high school, when Siri felt like a companion before she felt like a spy.
And middle school left my back pocket of darkwash skinny jeans cold where an enV2 slipped out.
Everyone was itching to write on the smartboard as soon as they installed it even if they hardly knew how to answer the question.
Fifth grade best friend's Wii Fit balance board told me I was out of shape and off center.
Game cube never made it so personal.
Gameboy advanced and gameboy were over-the-shoulder experiences, because my parents bought them for brotherBOY.
Could one consider the educational leap frog booklets+stilus a sort of digital touch pad?
A nano, and a shuffle, an iPod touch, a laptop, a desktop, an iPad—a lot of Apple products.
Refined coordination through brick on Blackberries
typos that evolved into lingo because flip phones typed like 3DEFdef 4GHIghi
and made these things out of [[paper]] to digitalize them with my imagination.
<img src="https://www.computerdealernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/brickbreaker.jpg">
↶↷Does remembering begin in the present and work its way back? Or does it start at the beginning?