April 22nd

‘Anamnesiologisist — I study what has been forgotten’ — that’s how Laurence Arne-Sayles, an anti-hero of “Piranesi”, a book by Susanna Clarke, describes himself. That’s not a real word, but I understand the meaning behind it very well. That could be a good description of me, well — a part of me anyway.

I understand the need to go back, to try to understand, to try to see how it (everything) was. On some level it’s just simple curiosity, almost like being a voyeur — looking at people, at situations that happened, most of the time already knowing the final result. But for me, it’s also something deeper — to try to see when it all started to go downhill for us, to see if we, as the human race, actually ever had a chance that was squandered somewhere along the way, or maybe what we have right now is as good as it gets? It’s difficult for me to put in the right words — I think that somewhere, sometime in the past there was some action, something that could be seen as insignificant but something that changed the course of history and course of human development.

I like the silence of the past — I can study it at a very slow pace, I can look at small, particular detail — something that I read somewhere or I saw on one of my walks. I can start exploring among places that are in the name only now, among the dead, among words written and said a long time ago.

A real master of what can be called “Anamnesiology” was W.G. Sebald. He was able to set a somber tone with a slow exploration of details and curiosities in all of his books. He was looking for something, something indescribable, something left from the past (be it in the air, on a crumbling wall of an abandoned building, on a page of an old newspaper or a book) that we still can notice if we look hard enough at that small detail. I understand that feeling, but I still don’t have enough of the right words in my head to be able to describe it.

I will get there though, all that I want to share — my thoughts and my feelings and my observations — is just bubbling underneath, I will be ready soon.