photographic memory

amnesia has to be one of the most painless maladies. even Alzheimer's seems to be fraught with a certain reflexive hurt: the constant frustration that there are things which cannot be remembered—at least not today. therein lies the source of the ache: memory cannot be partial without causing problems. you must either have or lose it, both complete and completely.

i'm finishing up the Roman Central Europe project for Malynne. that we didn't meet on Friday means both that we have had to reschedule and, more importantly, that i won't be able to go to Ann Arbor to see 3/4 (plus 1, but still minus 1) of my jet-lagged family for about 5 seconds. (when the grand Sum of Seconds for the Summer/Year is only going to be a few scant multiples of that, an additional 5 would be worth it; i had just reached such a conclusion when the meeting was set for Tuesday.)

the extra days have given me the inestimably glorious opportunity to do that component of the project which i promised ages ago and have been avoiding in and through the bringing of massive amounts of highly pertinent scholarly articles to Malynne's doorstep. granted, i could just "forget" that i ever made such an offer. at the same time, however: i've sworn off more article gleaning only to find myself in possession of more time than i've had since April, i am (despite evidence to the contrary on one of these descriptive fronts) a Woman of my Word, and, finally and shamefully, this could be my big chance to break from the mere footnotes of Malynne's first book and into full-fledged textual reference in her second....

anyway, the task at hand: sorting through my photos for those of Roman Ruins in Central Europe. which means: Plovdiv, Sofia, and Sarajevo.

and, in the process, realising that these were taken too long ago for flickr to keep my masterpiece of tagging active: maintaining a "Roman" separate from the "ruin" (but using both for all pictures of the ancient crumblings) enabled me to link—and, therefore, make some implicit claim about— all sorts of historical, natural, and human damages and scripts. having lost places by leaving, now these will slowly be lost again—until all that remains are those photos i've been given and from the neighborhood. and then none.

collecting the ones of pith to the Malynne project, i am reminded that the reason i took the photographs in the first place could have been because i was already doing this project (although, of course, this was months before her offer of the Research Assistantship that, in some way, made my decision to leave Beograd a feasible one). elements like these are why Central Europe "matters," why there is anything (let alone so much) to say about the region at all. this is where, more than perhaps anywhere else, It All smashed up against itself, leaving traces on land and in language. i imagine a sped-up film strip series, empire and national maps overlaid for every swath of the world. this area would be almost too dizzying to look upon.

it's not so much the constant boundary shifts and the resulting juxtaposition, but also these as historical constants in themselves: the necessity of boundary living, the ways in which this is carried out and, moreover, thought about. there's a distinction between observing and inhabiting—and much of what is "observed" is, in fact, the representations of inhabitation.

that the ruins sprawl over hills is first evidence: they have not, say, been dragged by a nervous group of curators and/or concerned citizens, into a museum or even sheltered from the elements of wind and weather. with only a few exceptions, "visiting hours" are 24/7 and "entry fees" cheap-as-free.

that they are constantly present, always accessible, renders these ancient stones both crucial and extraneous to the city/country whose topography they clutter. i always clambered alone—except when the steps, walls, and arches formed part of the city walked for purposes other than petri-gazing: there the groups of people were interested in the other side of the adjacence with the hewn one: the Nouveau Pastel (harkening to the original Habsburg-era style) and the glittery store it housed.

there's a powerful truth demonstrated in this—and in the graffiti sprayed all across its surface. real knowledge is exactly here: to be so familiar with something known that it is, then, forgotten to reference. only having been, thus, absorbed and distributed can this knowledge be such that allows for life. if there are those who comment, extensively, it is for the (presumed) benefit of those who will never look past the columns, standing and fallen, in search of their car parked therebehind, who will never use a word without characterising it as Turkish or Latin primarily, above, and to the exclusion of its being, merely, the right one.

to know: to forget to remember: to remember, so as to forget: to forget, so as to remember: to remember to forget: to live.

we photograph that which is distant and which we do not know—and that which we would wrench, artificially, into the further artificiality of closeness and knowledge. for this reason, photographs are inherently problematic: these, which exist because neither the totalising memory (which is forgetting) nor the knowledge which does not fix to film and immobility have, thus, been achieved. imperfect is the memory that cannot help but remember that it is, in fact, an image of a memory. full of pain is the reminder.