The Paradox of Memory

Memory is fallible.

Every time you access a memory you change it.

To retain a memory you must access it often.

The more vividly you remember a long-ago event the less accurate that memory is.

The passion then that became your being is therefore now more metaphor than substance.
True only as metaphors are true.

If the goal is an accurate account of an event, recording works best. You can put it down just then and put it away and never think about it--until, years later, you stumble upon your image of this forgotten time and read it like a story, one you feel you may have read before, recalling each line as it emerges, unable to anticipate what’s next, as though the account you are reading is of something that happened to someone else.

Which it is.

It is always the destiny of history to be resurrected

as story.