I didn’t want to lose anything. That was the main problem,” Sarah Manguso writes on the opening page of Ongoingness, her short book about learning to let herself forget things. She long fears being “lost in time,” until finally she realizes (as I’ve quoted once before), “the forgotten moments are the price of continued participation in life.” In... See more

In A Primer for Forgetting, scholar and critic Lewis Hyde explores the idea that forgetting can be as useful as remembering—and that, in fact, the two are not opposed but work in concert with each other. This idea sparked for him when he was studying the importance of memory, and in reading about the old oral cultures who passed knowledge through... See more

There are moments when I think Sunny’s first year went by fast, then I stumble across an old photo or text and my perception of those early months unfolds like an accordion and I’m stunned to recall the depth and variety of experiences I underwent, the majority of which have now been lost to me, and which may be recalled only in bits and pieces... See more