BANKS FOR THE MEMORIES...

There's a theory that whenever you remember something for the second time, you're not recalling the actual event itself, but your first remembrance of it.  Therefore, when you remember it for the third time, you're remembering your second recollection of it, etc., etc.  It's an interesting theory, and perhaps it applies to memories we consciously decide we want to recapture in our craniums, but what about memories of events, items, people, etc., that spring unbidden into our minds, prompted by the sight, sound, or smell of something?  Doesn't that tend to suggest that the memory is embedded in our brains, and not something that we have to re-create each and every time we wish to remember it?

For example, sometimes when I'm re-reading a book I first read as a child, I find that the scenes which pop up in my brain upon reading descriptions of places in the unfolding story are exactly the same as when I first read the book.  Surely my mind can't be re-creating a previous memory of something I read 50-odd years ago?  Isn't it more realistic to conclude that the 'picture' was embedded - established - all that time ago, and that I'm retrieving it from my memory banks where it's lain previously undisturbed and unremembered for decades?

What's your take on this, fellow Crivites?  Are memories fixed and established, or do they have to be re-created each time we decide to remember something?  (Maybe both scenarios are true in the case of different memories.  For instance, some things I have absolutely no difficulty at all in recalling, other things I have to work at.)  Let your thoughts be known.  

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