Excavation of Memory
Eight days passed and no ideas or imaginations struck me. Purely by coincidence, I found Walter Benjamin’s unpublished single-page thesis on memory. He proposed that one must begin digging, and come to find that Earth was never the one to give life, but is only a tapestry, rich with vegetations of memory. His words halt abruptly- it was clear he intended to write more- and in the inertia, I begin this piece. The idea of excavating a memory, of unearthing something significant or lost, struck me, or I struck it, with a spade I can hold. Benjamin’s experiment had echoed in my mind from time to time before I found his text. I envied those who were able to expand and watch themselves in the past, observing keen details, collecting what would become the gurgling soil in their veins. I envied Anzi the most; he would elaborately report his childhood, his college days, his love affairs and his crimes to me, insisting that I write it all. I of course, never did. However, I woul...