Genetic Amnesia
(Wraith’s note: I really like this quote and it was kind of overshadowed with my news, so I am moving it up.)
I like books, mainly sci-fi and the occasional horror or mysteries.
One of my favorite authors is F Paul Wilson. (If you have never read any of his “Repairman Jack” books, you are missing something. That is, if you like stories that are part mystery, part horror, part equalizer (as in the TV show.) If you don’t, poor you.
Anyway, in one of his books (not a Repairman Jack,) he has a character who happens to be adopted and there is a part where he is trying to explain to his wife why he feels the need to find his roots after being contacted telling him that he is the sole benificiary .
“It’s like having amnesia and being alone on a ship drifting over the Marianas trench; you drop anchor but it never hits bottom, so you go on drifting and drifting. You believe that if you knew where you came from, maybe you could get some idea where you were going. But you look behind you and it’s all open sea. You feel cut off from your past. It’s a form of social and genetic amnesia..”
When his wife said she understood because her parents died when she was a child and she was raised by a family member he says:
“They were gone but at least you had known them. And even if they had died the day after you were born, it would still be different. Because you could go back and look at pictures of them, talk to people who knew them. They would exist for you, conciously and subconciously. You’d have roots you could trace back to England or France or wherever. You’d feel part of a flow, part of a process; you’d have a history behind you, pushing you, toward someplace far ahead.”
She replied that she doesn’t think about those things no one does. His reply:
“That’s because you have them. … You don’t think about your right hand much, do you? But if you had been born with out one, you’d find yourself wishing for a right hand every day.”
Great description though, right? Granted, by the end of the book, the character winds up being a souless vessel for evil to come into the world, but then again it is a horror novel.

February 10th, 2006 at 7:19 am
I like your quote too. It is a good way to explain to those who don’t “get” it!