Memory and the Unconscious

Memory can be communal, liturgical, and beautiful, drawing on all parties’ understandings of things; or it can be tyrannical, dictating what happened and how the past is to be seen.

The tyrannical handling of memory whittles away at the dignity of people: it tells them, “You are not African; you are a nigger,” and “You are not different… you are queer,”“This is our land,” or “You are not good…. you are sinful,” and “You are not beautiful… you are hateful.”  When uncertain memory sits in the hands of un-love, there’s not much hope for the heart.

This is why reinventions of memory require conversation where there is love.  Whether it’s in politics or relationships or theology, reconciliation requires a liturgical memory, two or more people coming together to say, “Here’s how we will remember.  Even where we disagree, this is what we can agree we both remember.”

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The Book of Otter: Language & Memory

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein 

I wish I could write one memory precisely as I see it so nobody could ever hope to misunderstand it.  I wish I had not, many years ago, dropped my copy of Paul Ricouer’s best book in a swimming pool.

I’m thinking of forgetfulness lately, and re-remembrance.  So many decisions these days have hinged on remembering the past a certain way, and knowing that if that memory is wrong then life is a devastating lie. 

The Israeli’s and the Palestinians have so much to forget, or rather to remember the same way, before they settle themselves.  So do I.

There are places of forgetfulness, where the self melts down.

When it comes back together, strange and fresh, there’s no way of speaking.

Noli me tangere, Jesus said on rising from the dead.  Don’t touch me.   Some deaths are just too total to permit it.

Ghosts, Images and Voices

"But even at forty, I was struck by how much the ghostliness lingered, how much the feel of the place had changed, how beneath that there was something I can't quite put a name to unless it's that memory makes places sacred in a way that time can't disappoint and change can rob but never beggar."

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