Preface To Lessons: The Brain Asks Questions It Tries To Answer

How do I store memories, asks the brain.  In bottles or socks, in chests of drawers or boxes?  In discrete rectangles of time, in little flashes of electricity that bounce from neuron to neuron?

Or do I store memories at all, asks the brain.  Do I not so much store them as revise them, a painting never completed?  Do I not so much store them as rewrite them, an editing job unending?

But then how do I lose memories, asks the brain.  Do the mice that live inside me nibble away at them until they're mere fragments?  Do they simply fade away like vanishing gods, no longer worshipped, so only crumbling temples & inscriptions remain?

Why teach me anything, asks the brain.  Would I not learn my lessons anyway?  Would those lessons eventually molder & sleep, sighing fitfully under ever more memories stowed away in the dark, dusty attic of the mind?

It's too bad I love learning lessons, thinks the brain.  Sometimes, though, I think I haven't learned anything at all.