When I arrived in Providence in September 2007, the Arcade only had a few more months of being open. I have no memory of it being open, only closed; an empty building next to an empty lot.
So I was rather surprised to find out when talking to my friend, Lauren, that I had been inside the building before it closed. She remembers that during our freshman year at Brown that, as part of an early foray downtown, we stopped in at the Arcade together, apparently at my suggestion:
Memory is a funny thing. Even after hearing her talk about this, I have no recollection of that event. Our memories do not line up, and in the space between them is a sliver of uncertainty, and hence of possibility, regarding the past reality. The implications of conflicting memories reach beyond the specifics of this example- they challenge the very concept of being able to know "what actually happened", of being able pin down and approach facts, truths as objective realities.
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