Remembering: Building a Memory Palace

True confession: I hate to memorize. It isn’t a lack of desire or appreciation or value or effort. I try to memorize, and I fail: repeating and repeating and repeating a poem or monologue or passage of Scripture seems to flatten it. With each dull repetition, beauty seeps out. Am I attempting to embrace my human inheritance in a subhuman way? My mind wanders. I want something new. I am bored. “Mom, what’s the point,” my philosophical child asks, “of memorizing something that I won’t remember?” Indeed.

I first heard of a memory palace some years ago and thought it might be the antidote to my memorization sickness. Yet it wasn’t until I recently watched Katerina Hamilton’s The Art of the Memory Palace that the idea became enfleshed. So, what is it? A memory palace facilitates memorization by locating the content for memorization in a place (or palace). You begin by choosing a physical location (your house is recommended) and dividing it into rooms or zones. As you move through the space, each of these sections of the “palace” will house a portion of the text to be memorized. You then select concrete things in the room to serve as hooks for keywords in the passage. These hooks should preferably engage the five senses and evoke vibrant emotions. The stronger the sensory-emotional resonance of the hook, the greater its power.

So, my children and I began our first palace together. I chose the beginning verses of Genesis since we will memorize the first chapter this year. Standing on the sidewalk, we looked up at our front door where the chalk markings stand in sharp relief against the black paint of the wood door. The house blessing, 20 + C + M + B + 24, (Christus mansionem benedicat), has not faded since we prayed over our home at the beginning of the year on Epiphany. Thus, an easy first hook: “In the beginning.”

Opening the front door we entered a small foyer. I imagined the irritating feel of sand under my feet when I walk barefoot on the front mat: “and the earth…” Above an antique chest is an old Close Reads poster with a Wendell Berry quote above a hazy tree line. “Was without form and void!” my boys shouted in unison, pointing at the poster. We turned to the right, entering the living room. There stands my favorite feature of our home, a generous fireplace. It now sits empty and dark in the warm weather: “and darkness.” In the fireplace I imagine the face of Sirius Black, come to pay us a visit: “was upon the face.” Under the grate is a small trap door leading to an ash dump where the ashes recede under the floor and into the garage: “of the deep.”

We continued on. I chose too many verses to put in our palace in one shot. Some of the hooks weren’t strong enough and didn’t hold. It took much more time than our old way of working. But the beauty of it was clear. A memory palace is not a memory trick but a way of seeing sacramentally. Reality consists of both the seen and the unseen, and sacramentality recognizes our participation in this reality as both bodies and souls. The memory palace works with, not against, our nature, gracing it. In short, it is humane.

I love my home. It is the first and only house my husband and I have owned. I have been told it has good bones, which is a southern way to say that it needs some work. But my memories in this house are the memories of our family: a birth, a baptism, a death. Countless celebrations and ordinary days. Long talks on the back porch and ceaselessly yelling, “Stop running through the house!” Occasionally I will look or hear or smell and be struck by a moment that has passed. Time folds in upon itself and becomes, for a moment, one. And now, these words join this story. When I say, “The earth was without form and void,” I stand where I once stood, calling my husband to announce a pregnancy. When I say, “Darkness was over the face of the deep,” I long for cooler weather and think of how many times over the years the firelight has nourished my soul. And when I stand by my dinner table and say, “The waters which were above the firmament,” the words become a part of every feast celebrated there.

That evening, my daughter spilled her water at the dinner table. This occurs with a tiresome regularity; she fills a glass overfull and then knocks it over. A deluge disrupts dinner: someone jumps up, fetching the towels I just washed, and removes the tablecloth so as not to leave a water stain underneath. Because this annoyance is so habitual I had used it in my memory place – water spilled on the floor and table as the waters under and above the firmament. This time, as I went to search for towels I paused. Instead of the nuisance, I thought of the creator God. I thought of the wonder of waters divided and the miracle of rebirth. Then, calmly, I handed my daughter a towel.