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104 pages, Hardcover
Published March 3, 2015
Someday I might read about some of the moments I've forgotten, moments I've allowed myself to forget, that my brain was designed to forget, that I'll be glad to have forgotten and be glad to rediscover as writing. The experience is no longer experience. It is writing. I am still writing.Όντας μανιώδης καταγραφέας της καθημερινότητάς μου, όσο ευχάριστη ή δυσάρεστη κι αν τυχαίνει να είναι, όντας εμμονική στην αποτύπωση στο ημερολόγιο των μικρών και μεγάλων συμβάντων και της πρόσληψής τους, το συγκεκριμένο κείμενο ήταν απολύτως ταιριαστό με την ιδιοσυγκρασία μου. Η Manguso εκφράζει τους συλλογισμούς της για την τέχνη του να κρατάς ημερολόγιο, την ανάγκη να διατηρήσεις αναλλοίωτες, έστω στο χαρτί, ορισμένες αναμνήσεις, να αποδώσεις με τη γλώσσα τα όσα αποτελούν άυλους παράγοντες της ζωής, τη μνήμη στην καθαρότερη μορφή της.
I didn't want to lose anything. That was my main problem. I couldn't face the end of a day without a record of everything that had ever happened.Παράλληλα η συγγραφέας διερευνά τις έννοιες της μητρότητας, με τη γέννηση του γιου της να είναι σταθμός στην ημερολογιακή ζωή της, και της θνητότητας, άρρηκτα συνδεδεμένη με τη μνήμη, προβληματίζεται με τη φθορά των αναμνήσεων στο χρόνο και τη μετατροπή τους σε περιληπτικά highlights αλλά και με τη σκέψη της συνέχειας.
Soon after his mother died, my husband's dead father's best friend's ex-wife died. The best friend is the only one left. My husband said the man's name.That leaves him, my husband said. That leaves him, of the people who have known me since I was born. And then my childhood will be truly gone.Στον επίλογο η Manguso σχολιάζει με ειλικρίνεια την επιλογή της να μην παραθέσει αποσπάσματα ημερολογιακών της καταγραφών, γράφοντας
I was afraid that if I read the diary, I'd have to change what I'd written about it from memory. And producing even those few thousand words had been so arduous, I couldn't bear the thought of having to rewrite them. But I was even more afraid of facing the artifact of the person I was in 1992 and 1997 and 2003 and so on. Time punishes us by taking everything, but it also saves us - by taking everything.
Shortly after the turn of the millennium, I read the diary from beginning to end. Finding nothing of consequence in 1996, I threw the year away.
I’d already shredded the volumes I wrote in high school—not to keep them from others but to keep them from myself. So it seems I didn’t want to remember everything.
I wanted to remember what I could bear to remember and convince myself it was all there was.