Remembering is an act of resistance. Gaslighting is ineffective against a firm memory. The lies unravel when someone is keeping a close record. Want to be a true subversive? Then get the facts straight and tell the story. Footnotes help, but be wary of the oft-quoted sources. You can see who they’re working for…
I’m reminded of this every time I turn on this machine these days. Every hour brings a new fabrication, in declarative tense, as though it were self-evident. Pure opinion and mendacity masquerading as truth. Apparently, if you say it with conviction, or at least bravado, you are manufacturing fact out of hot air. And then all the bloviating idiots repeat it… hashing it out as though it were real, as if it really happened that way, as if it wasn’t patently just made up on the spot by a delusional mind whose single abiding ambition is to be the center of universal awe.
In this climate, holding on to your clear memories, keeping them free of the taint of intentionally sown doubt and ludicrous disinformation, is self-defense.
My Irish ancestors, people of an oral culture, were deeply suspicious of the written word. Because once it is written down, it solidifies, becomes an entity unto itself, dissevered from objective experience and accountability. You can’t readily question the author. You can’t easily attune the written word to better fit the changing world. This word thing takes on a solidity, an immutability, a persistence despite all evidence to the contrary. And then it spreads, almost of its own accord. It’s eerie…
I think they got it partially wrong. It’s not the written word. It’s a recorded falsehood, whatever the media. It’s just that recording always comes at a cost and so reflects the biases and bigotry of wealth, a class that is bent on twisting truth into a message that serves their desires. I don’t know what my Irish forebears would have made of social media, but I suspect they would have been deeply offended by the daily mutilation of authenticity and the complete lack of answerability. I think I hear genetic echoes of their rage in my head whenever I turn on a screen…
So, I turn it off…
When the mind-refrain of “No! That is not true!” becomes a primal howl, I just walk away. I trust what I know to be true and what flows logically from there, and I ignore the ridiculous bombast and the sinister slants. I also keep written records — because I was not raised in an oral culture, and my memory isn’t quite so prodigious and detailed. And also because every mind will rewrite the past to make the self more shiny. A recording in my own hand is a guard against aggrandizing revision.
I also keep things, remembrances, relics, reminders. These things ground me. I can hold a stone in my hand and re-member its story, our story, my story. I put on the sweater my mother bought for my January birthday in a blizzard all those decades ago, and my senses tell me so many stories. My mother’s care. Those cold nights. The solid fact of this durable thing emphasizing the decline in quality of all recently made things…
Think about it… There aren’t going to be antiques and vintage things from this era. All we are passing on to the future is toxic waste.
So I keep the past. As a gift to the future…
This is how I hold onto the present world.
How do you stay grounded in truth? Have you given it much thought? Or do you make a conscious effort? I suspect, if you tolerate my blather, you’re in the latter category. What are your mnemonics? How do you hold on to your memories in the face of this onslaught of lies? And how do you reassure yourself when the doubt creeps in?
I think these skills are important, possibly the most important skills you will cultivate and practice. If we forget how to question, how to hold a falsehood up to the light, how to reveal it to others, then that lie becomes our truth. And they’ve won… Or, more precisely, we’re lost…
Gather your remembrances… hold them dear… know them… and trust in them…
And share! Because open conversation is the best antidote to gaslighting and lies.
The Wednesday Word
for 12 November 2025
remembrance
What does remembrance mean to you? Think about it. If you’d like, send me a quick poem or story… or just a few thoughts. If you really have something to say, maybe enter my Wednesday Word contest on AllPoetry.
And now here are the thoughts that arise in me when I think on remembrances…
the storyteller
my gift to the future
wrapped up in pretty bows
to take out and admire
in some needful hour
she said
as she scraped the rust
from nostalgia
shining it up
like halcyon mementos
ranged over the mantlepiece
and as she wove her tapestries
her fingers played
half-remembered mazurkas
compulsive muscle memory
air piano
she said
as she waltzed through time
panning for relics in the stream
sifting surreal impressions
into stout remembrances
this one a lovely bauble
perfect for the holiday tree
with hot cider and biscochitos
that one a cautionary tale
reminder to keep the shoes well tied
and the path free of ice
see now
it’s all just yesterdays
even when it feels so long ago
we were here
right where you stand
we knew these quicksand mires
mapped out all the stepping stones
leading to safety
we have milked these hours
for all the sweetness
we have done this life
and this i give
to guide you through the night
so pull up a chair, my children
let me tell you a story…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 
Memories and objects holding memories, these are what are important to me. Listening to the brouhaha over the splicing of Donald Trump’s speech in a BBC Panorama programme and subsequent criticicsm of the much-vaunted BBC as a whole serves to underscore the importance of keeping an open mind, holding wise council, and to disregard much of what one reads – and sees – in the social media. There are always two sides to a story!
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The smell of rosemary bread
********
The opposite of true
Is not the false,
but forgetting.
To live our lives
by never forgetting a kindness
shown to the world, however small.
When we forget the kindness
of the true world,
we overlook where
love of the world comes from.
As in the kindness of nonviolence
That makes the world infinitely softer.
Remembrance of a kindness
long ago, is to hold on tightly,
to that true world,
now, so easily forgotten.
Like Ophelia shall we give rosemary
for something not forgotten,
still present in our deep memories.
Of the kindness that sustains
as the smell of rosemary bread.
In small acts of kindness
is the remembrance that
the true world is
a place worth living.
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I write things down too. But also, working as a librarian, I find different reliable sources of information to triangulate and corroborate the truth of the ongoing poo storm.
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