The Invention of Solitude

The moment of illumination that burns across the sky of solitude.

Written language absolves one of the need to remember much of the world, for the memories are stored in the words.

Is it true that one must dive to the depths of the sea and save one’s father to become a real boy?

Himmler: “I have made the decision to annihilate every Jewish child from the face of the earth.”

Then he writes. It was. It will never be again.

“In this most Christian of worlds / All poets are Jews.”

It was negligence that governed him, not memory, and even though he went on living in that house all those years, he lived in it as a stranger might have.

For it is only in the darkness of solitude that the work of memory begins.

My choices are limited. I can remain silent, or else I can speak of things that cannot be verified. At the very least, I want to put down the facts, to offer them as straightforwardly as possible, and let them say whatever they have to say. But even the facts do not always tell the truth.