She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it, or whether she’d read it,

She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it, or whether she’d read it, or had it brought up in conversation. But she knew she knew it, because here she was, thinking about it. A frown, frustrated by the distraction of trying to trace the genealogy of an idea. That was never a smart move.

The idea, as anonymously authored as it was, was this: those who made a deliberate thing out of memorising would create a sort of mental space, a personal architecture that they could then fill with the things that needed to be remembered. Entire chambers in their minds, that they could wander at will, having each doorway, each room, remind them of a different thing. The idea was to create a space that they could remember easily, to link up seemingly random facts and ideas with ease, rather than having to memorise entire sequences. Attached significance made a difference.

She didn’t have a memory palace, or even a memory hut. She had the swirls on the ceiling left by the plasterer, but she had memories each curve, every little circle or, more often, oval, and somehow attached meaning to each one. Deliberate conditioning, so that when she wandered their little bumps and ridges with her eyes she would remember something about him, something they did together. 

The way he laughed. The feel of his hand on her rear, or how she would blush when he started down the path of forcing her to repeat more and more depraved things as he said them. How hard he would make her come. The words he used to turn her on, even when he didn’t explicitly mean to. His smile.

They all had their little swirls of plaster, every one. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as a palace in her mind, but it did the job. She’d love hours wandering each minuscule ridge, lost in her own thoughts.