Forgetting

Jul 10, 2009

I’ll explain it this way. During our lives, we struggle to forget. And it’s foolish to assume that forgetting is altogether a bad thing. Memory is a bruise still tender. History is a rusted pile of blades and manacles. And forgetting can sometimes be the most creative and life-sustaining thing that we can ever hope to accomplish. The problem happens when we become too good at forgetting. When somehow we forget to forget, and when we blunder into circumstances that we consciously should have avoided. This is how we awaken to the stories buried deep within our sleeping selves or trafficked quietly through the touch of others. This is how we’re shaken by vague scents or tastes. How we’re stolen by an obscure word, an undertow dragging us back and down and away.

– Chariandy, David. Soucouyant. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007. 32.

July 10, 2009 Categories: Lifted Trackback

One Response to “Forgetting”

1 fathima Jul 17, 2009

She tells me now that she doesn’t understand that thing called memory. She doesn’t understand its essence or dynamic, and why, especially, it never seems to abide by the rules of time or space or individual consciousness. She doesn’t understand how a young woman, in the midst of some small crisis, can remember catastrophes that happened lifetimes ago and worlds away, remember and proclaim these catastrophes as if she herself had witnessed them first hand. She doesn’t understand that at all, or else how the very same young woman, offering only what she imagines to be a cruel joke, can in fact end up remembering a catastrophe that is yet to happen.

– pg 166.

Forgetting

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