Those Who Live In Memories Are Never

My Fingers Positively Itched To Drift At Length Along Their Spines, To Arrive At One Whose Lure I Could Not Pass, To Pluck It Down, To Inch It Open, Then To Close My Eyes And Inhale The Soul-sparking Scent Of Old And Literate Dust.

He Had The Vague Sense Of Standing On A Threshold, The Crossing Of Which Would Change Everything.

The Stretch Of Years Leaves None Unmarked: The Blissful Sense Of Youthful Invincibility Peels Away And Responsibility Brings Its Weight To Bear.

Wars Make History Seem Deceptively Simple. They Provide Clear Turning Points, Easy Distinctions.: Before And After, Winner And Loser, Right And Wrong. True History, The Past, Is Not Like That. It Isn't Flat Or Linear. It Has No Outline. It Is Slippery, Like Liquid; Infinite And Unknowable, Like Space. And It Is Changeable: Just When You Think You See A Pattern, Perspective Shifts, An Alternate Version Is Proffered, A Long-forgotten Memory Resurfaces.

It Is A Cruel, Ironical Art, Photography. The Dragging Of Captured Moments Into The Future; Moments That Should Have Been Allowed To Be Evaporate Into The Past; Should Exist Only In Memories, Glimpsed Through The Fog Of Events That Came After. Photographs Force Us To See People Before Their Future Weighed Them Down.