Joshua asks

Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores.

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to understand but is obviously calm, someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquillity, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to reenter and be riven.…

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“I was thinking of that trip we took to Lake Tear of the Clouds. Remember?” “Of course. It took us two hours to get the tent up in a rainstorm.” “I thought it was clear.” She shakes her head. “No, we shivered in the tent all night and none of us slept.” “You sure about that?” “Yes. That trip was the foundation of my never-again wilderness policy.”

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In her journal, in what’s now Namibia, Marian had written: I’d like to think I will remember this particular moon, seen from the particular angle of this balcony on this night, but if I forget, I will never know that I’ve forgotten, as is the nature of forgetting. I’ve forgotten so much—almost all I’ve seen. Experience washes over us in great waves

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