Layering memories over memories

It's funny how the human mind works. You hear a phrase, let's use 'China Town' for example, and all the connotations that you as a unique individual have of China Town come rushing to the fore. Perhaps it's memories of experiences in a China Town somewhere in the world, perhaps it's images from the weird fantastic 80's movie Big Trouble in Little China starring Kurt Russel, or perhaps, as in my case, it's the memory of someone telling you that they were staying in China Town.

So once the mind hears the words, it references them against your memories for connotations, and once those connotations have been found, certain obligatory emotional states are recalled, depending on how you felt about whatever your own personal connotations might be.

The amazing thing about the mind though is that it doesn't mind replacing connotations of concepts, so long as you engage with a physical reality that allows newer, stronger and more immediate connotations to overwhelm the major memory.

A girl I know told me that when she broke up with her boyfriend of three and a half years she couldn't go to any of the places where she had strong memories of that person for nearly six months, but perhaps she would be able to have engaged with those places if she had found ways to create fresh memories. Certainly that's what I began doing.

Nonetheless, if we return to China Town for an example, I will never feel the pang of jealously I felt knowing this person was in China Town, whenever I hear the word China Town, instead I will imagine insanely crowded streets, full of Chinese people, Chinese signs hanging off buildings, shops full of dried animals such as sea-horses, wares of shark tales, disgusting and delicious things cooking on the street, not being able to move because I am stuck in a human traffic jam, red and gold everywhere, stepping off a cramped street full of hawkers and ware-sellers to accidentally discover a series of ancient temples dedicated to Buddhism, Confuciasm and Taoism, beautiful, calm, peaceful, back into the thronging fray, struggle struggle, stopping for a beer somewhere extremely dodgy that still has a small Buddhist shrine, everywhere in this goddamn place has a small Buddhist shrine, some more walking and then back onto the much calmer streets of Bangkok in a car/bike engineering/repairing district. There were surprisngly few stupid farangs there.

Farangs are stupid. On Ko San road all the tuk-tuk's charge 200 Baht to get to the train station. Walk two minutes off the road and you can get it for 50. A word to the wise. Sometimes two minutes can save you 150 Baht. Plus I heard of a stupid farang who drive a scooter into a ditch. Ha, ha, ha, stupid farang.

Farang is Farengi in Amharic (Ethiopia) and Foreigner in English. Would anyone like to research the etymology of that for me? The best research will be posted on this blog, possibly as my own work.