I'm reading The Orange Curtain by John Shannon. On page 92 he describes a character, a young man named Rogelio, in this fashion:

Rogelio had left an old automobile tire mounted on a wheel right in the center of the yeard, and he (the protagonist) wondered once again about that peculiar trait. When something no longer had an immediate use for Rogelio, it went out of existence. Jack Liffey (the protagonist) found screwdrivers in the sink, empty beer bottles in the bookcase and, once a half-eaten coconut inside the washing machine that Rogelio had just cleared out. He wondered if it was just a hyperactive sense of focus that moved on to its next object too quickly.

That description would fit my SO perfectly. Each time he looks in a cupboard or the refrigerator, it's as if he is seeing its contents for the first time. The search for something set down somewhere and forgotten is the search for an unrecognizable object in an uncharted territory. When something is set aside, it ceases to exist.

However, he does know that I keep an up-to-date visual memory file at my mental fingertips and if he asks me, I can reload it from RAM and tell him where I last saw the lost or misplaced item, if I've seen it at all.

What an odd way to live, with things winking in and out of existence when you happen to need them -- or not. The corollary -- that nothing is put away where it came from -- means that every search is long and frustrating, because the item in question could be anywhere; he's at the mercy of a capricious universe.

I couldn't -- and don't -- live like that.