MEMORY

Besides, if my actual past remains at my fingertips, how can I mold the memories of it into something more romantic than it actually was?

Andrea felt as if her mother had found a disease that was almost too convenient, a permanent forgetting. She told me, “I was kind of mad at her, like, Oh, yeah. You found your way out.”

Lists of destroyed buildings posted by the L.A. Conservancy and USModernist offer a ghost map of a past that extends far beyond living memory.

Yes, a lost house itself is a tragedy, but there is an entire universe in the items inside, an entire universe in the single page of a book that drifts away while you’re running to catch a flight. There is an entire universe in a quote, an entire universe in interpretations of a book that begs for humanity to find a way to survive when our... See more

But I think I would like to revise this response. I was asked in one interview if I was worried about being forgotten. I don’t remember the answer I actually gave, but the answer I wish I’d given is that my greater fear is having my memory misappropriated—being gone and having what I’ve said or done be reanimated, reduced to some bite-size... See more