Feats of Memorization!

“Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it.”
-- Granger, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –

I’ve been thinking about memory.
More specifically, memorization.
In Ray Bradbury’s dystopic nightmare Fahrenheit 451, all the books are being burnt, in favor of wraparound TV screens that allow for more complete social control. The hero, Montag, who begins as a fireman helping to incinerate the books, becomes a convert to the secret resistance movement dedicated to preserving the books and, along with them, human history and thought.
Towards the very end of the story he is running from the Mechanical Hounds and staying ahead of the helicopter searchlights until he lands up in a forest where fellow insurgents are hiding out.
As he gets aquainted with them, he learns that each of them has become a book, by memorizing it.
Montag suddenly feels unworthy of such devotion... “I don’t belong with you,” he says.... “I’ve been an idiot all the way.”
But they take him in.
Montag is introduced to Socrates, Jane Austen, Plato, Charles Dickens, Marcus Aurelius, and many more, all of them reciting the books they have assimilated, or “devoured.”
Later, as they move on in the darkness, Montag is seen squinting at the others suspiciously, and one of them rebukes him, saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
They all laugh and move along, downstream.

I am not very good at memorization.
I cannot imagine a world in which literature could only be appreciated by way of memorization, or recitation.
The lengthiest piece I have ever committed to memory is Psalm 139, from the Bible. One sonnet of Shakespeare. Most of my own poems.
Other than this..... oooh... I do not want to live in Montag’s world.
How is it that some people have such prodigious memories?
I marvel that some actors can recite from memory what amounts to an entire play, the whole performance. A 90 minute monologue.
I have read that there are people who have memorized the entire Bible, and others that have memorized the entire Koran (Qur’an). I just find that to be so incredible.
Feats of memorization become even more mind-boggling to me when they involve numbers or mathematics in general. Here is a recent news story that I found to be simply amazing:

Japanese Sets Math Record for Reciting 'Pi'
(source): AFP

July 4, 2005— A 59-year-old Japanese psychiatric counselor set a world record of sorts Sunday by reciting "pi," or the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, to 83,431 digits.
"I thank you all for your support," Akira Haraguchi told reporters and onlookers when he finished the overnight 13-hour feat at a public hall in Kisarazu in Tokyo's southern suburbs at 1:26 am. The ratio is about 3.14159.
According to the authoritative Guinness Book of World Records, the previous record for reciting pi from memory — 42,195 digits — was set by a then Japanese university student in 1995. Haraguchi had already recited the ratio up to about 54,000 digits last September but was forced to end the attempt when his time ran out at the facility hosting the event. There was no time limit set for the hall where he achieved the new record which he said would be submitted for recognition by the Guinness Book of World Records.
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So, this guy correctly recited an endless line of digits from memory for 13 hours!

Then there’s me.
I am Memorizationally Challenged!
I work with numbers all day, either entering them into a computer, or reading them off of a screen. Literally, all day long I am looking at numbers, but I have found that I can only really retain them in clumps of about four, maybe five. When something I am working with has ten digits or more, I blow a fuse.
I have to break it down into parts. I cannot (or very rarely) look at a ten digit number and then turn to someone and recite it.

Recently my phone O.D’d.
Kaput. Finished!
So I bought a new one, and plugged it in. Then an interesting thing happened.
I realized that I do not really KNOW even one phone number!
All of my frequently called numbers were pre-programmed into the old phone. I was relying, and relying HEAVILY on my phone’s memory.... not my own.
Perhaps our modern world is geared, with its gadgets and techno-help, to unintentionally make us more forgetful. Maybe we have less need to remember things.
Less need to memorize.

What is your own greatest feat of memorization? A speech? A lengthy poem? The names of your nephews and nieces, according to age? A dialogue scene in a movie? Your zip code or postal code?
Your own phone number? Your name?
I mean, all I know is this one thing about you, that you have successfully memorized the name of the most consistently interesting blogsite on the internet!