keta

n. a random image from your distant past that leaps back into your attention, that doesn't mean much of anything but is somehow able to keep fighting against the current, swimming back and forth in your mind, still developing.

After a species of salmon, Oncorhynchus keta, which "run" upstream to spawn every year, leaping back to the place they were born; they're not worth much commericially, but the ketas don't know that. When we look back on our lives, it's not just the moments that we remember, not the grand gestures and catered ceremonies, or the world we capture poised and smiling in photos. It's the little things—the minutes—the cheap raw material of ordinary time. Pronounced "kay-tuh."