Memory is not like a video camera; it's malleable, shifting and
changing with time, place, and mood. That's why, in mediation,
the story of a conflict is not as important as the role and
place of the current versions of the story in the path towards
resolution. When reading Beauty and the Soul, I came upon a
fanciful and charming paragraph that helps to illustrate
memory's shiftiness. What happens to our memory as time moves
on? We think of it as an archive, and for this reason we call
the recording of computer data "memory." I am afraid it is a
misleading metaphor. Imagine that the data stored in your
computer have their own life. A spell changes the numbers. The
texts you have written mix with each other, conjure up stories,
or turn into songs. The photos become animated, then a film, the
characters take trips all over the computer, start writing
e-mails themselves, and the people in your address book suddenly
have a will of their own and decide to play videogames. That is
how a computer would work if it ha