Weave your life into a moving tapestry

Life is a set of still photos woven together into a moving tapestry. You can take your memories of these pictures and create a mental kinetoscope of your life. (A kinetoscope, by the way, is an early motion picture device designed for pictures to be viewed through a peephole.)

With this device you can rewind to your earliest memories, then fast forward to the memories of your choice — from getting your driver’s license, to graduating from college. You can even skip over the ‘not so happy times.’

I’ve been playing my internal kinetoscope as far back as I can remember. My earliest memory is visiting my Gramma Mary Kramer in the Jewish home with my mother. By then, Gramma Kramer was gone, in the sense that Alzheimer’s disease had eaten up her memories, and she seemingly would have had no awareness of our visit.

In the kinetoscope I see me myself in ancient Super 8 film reel footage. A palette of washed-out panchromatic colors is stitched into a moving set of images. I’m jumping up and down furiously — I would have been no more than about four or five years old — barely aware of my surroundings. The Super 8 film reel then jumps forward several minutes, and find myself in the rec room of the Jewish home. An old man is doing coin tricks for me, and pretending to break his nose by covering it and gritting his teeth.