I will get drunk occasionally and put on Nat King Cole. My Father had always told me he had sung the perfect song.

I am eleven again, having my first whiskey, listening to a vinyl record, and smoking a Pall Mall unfiltered in a dark kitchen with the old man.

It is rare for me to intentionally do something to bring back a personal memory because there are already abundant stimuli in the world around me that do it for me. However, if I’m already remembering something or someone, I might listen to music that will bring enhance the emotional memory more. Removing other stimuli (like turning off the lights) helps as well.

Whenever I hear “I’d Just Love To Lay You Down” by Conway Twitty (our song), I instantly remember the first time I heard it. It was when my husband and I were dating. It came on and he came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me, and started singing it in my ear. That’s one of my favorite memories. That song is his ring tone on my phone and I listen to it whenever I miss him.

I also have a habit of looking over old pictures and thinking about those memories (such as our wedding picture, pictures of our children when they were first born or other times throughout their lives so far, family get togethers, etc).

I’m sometimes tempted to wee-wee in my pants to remind me of the gay abandon I felt as a toddler whilst urinating with impunity, that would be just plain silly though.

Not to recall a specific memory, but every once in a while I like to look at my old photos and high school yearbooks. More than the pictures, the sentiments written in the yearbooks bring back many memories.

I’ll pick up a part of a hay bale and smell it, or touch freshly plowed ground.

Listen to music.

I remember specific people and events through songs. “Ruby Tuesday” by the Rolling Stones brings back a certain dance in the spring of my junior year.

I am at a time where my memories are becoming ever more effervescent. Or do I mean ephemeral? Words, in particular, are deserting me like rich people leave NYC in summer time.

Sometimes I try to recover my memory of the word by searching for words like it or looking through word lists on thesauruses. Sometimes it helps, but not always.

More and more I am coming to accept the hole in my memory. It’s gone. It’s not coming back. I might as well make do with something else.

I have just returned from an amazing holiday in America and have bought loads of songs that were played a lot on the radio out there because of the amazing memories that they bring!

Sometimes when I’m in the moment, I try to fix details in my mind. A few years back, I was standing on a beach during an absolutely perfect moment, with the sun setting behind me and my companion and over the water. I remembered the main colors of the scene (bronze-periwinkle-moss-gold) as the framework, and now I can call up pretty everything about it.

I do that quite a lot. I smoke Newport cigarettes to remind me of when I used to share a cigarette with my ex of 2 years. (He smoked Newport cigarettes.) I also play the computer game solitaire to remind me of when I used to play it with my grandfather who passed away July 20th of this year. It’s