Play, Rewind, Repeat

If you have any doubts about your own sanity, do not watch this movie called Memento. If you have a tenuous hold on what is laughingly called reality, do not watch this movie called Memento. If you feel sometimes like your own life is a blur over which you have less and less control, do not watch this movie called Memento.
You may not even know that you are at risk until after you have watched it and absorbed it. By then it will be too late. I know these things because right now I am trying to come back to the real world as I think I know it to be. Having just watched this movie called Memento.
The main person in the story is Leonard who we are led to believe is a former insurance investigator. He thinks--we think--he once investigated a man whose short term memory loss was such that he gave his own wife a lethal amount of insulin. Without remembering or knowing what he had done. But there is this disturbing notion that maybe Leonard's own wife did not die a random violent death at the hands of inept drug dealing house invaders. Maybe Leonard gave her insulin but does not remember.
I think I say things to people that are OK or smart or insightful. But they hate me. They think I am evil and twisted and "vitriolic" to quote my boss. I go through life believing I am clever enough to be an insurance fraud investigator or a detective or a spy or an author or a movie director. I write stuff down that I think will provide an interesting record of my journey through life. I drive around in my Jaguar. Though I think about death and am conscious of unspeakable violence going on around me--sometimes only a few blocks away from me--I smile wanly at some strangers but am a hair's breadth from throttling others with my bare hands.
The happy and stupid part of my brain functions on the strength of little polaroid pictures I carry around in my pocket. Or at least file away on my hard drive. Most of them are happy pictures; unlike the ones in Memento. The daily times and places I must be somewhere are scrawled not so much on my chest or thigh like in Memento but all over my house and in my brief case and in my wallet and . . .I forget where I put them. In the movie, the pictures are mostly bad; of bad events or bad people with warnings hastily noted on the back or in margins. In the movie, the body ink is mostly bad; entreaties to get revenge or to remind the wearer of some past evil. At least I can be a tiny bit reassured that my pictures are happy and my notes benign. Or is that belief another delusion?
Watch this movie called Memento. Then ask yourself how sure you are that everything you do and see and experience is exactly what you think it is. Or something far worse.