That what is remembered is always an enigma, that others say it was not like that is also an enigma, that we forgot something and suddenly when reviewing a note, letter, document it turns out that it did happen exactly as we remembered it but in a different place and with other people, and that all of this sounds familiar to us, it is inevitable because memory is the axis of a spun life. Historians, psychologists, psychoanalysts, cognitive scientists and all those who have the habit of writing down even the most insignificant detail know this. Among the first to whom the topic of memory in relation to the individual became a puzzle was Augustine, that North African philosopher who converted to the Christian faith and who wrote some of the most rigorous treatises, and the classic of personal memory books entitled confessions, which has the huge advantage that it can be found in every small bookstore and even in supermarkets, so there is no excuse not to read it. The best of confessions Augustine’s is in chapter 10, where he leaves the journey of his life, which took him from Africa to Italy, in search of intellectual light. In fact he was a philosopher who wanted to clarify his mental scenario and thought in a dark age, like everyone, in which there were many philosophers who did not convince him. He was not a mystic nor did he have divine revelations. This is how he talks about his life, in which his mother, who followed in her son’s footsteps, also completed the journey to Italy, played a huge role. Not longer, it already seems new. The point is that in chapter 10 of his book, Agustín begins to think about memory. Actually, confessions they are turned into an essay in this final part. Of course, I will not summarize his thinking. The one who did it better than anyone is Paul Ricouer in another book that I can’t stop recommending, time and storytelling; It is the most complete that has been published on memory, history, fiction and stories from the angle of philosophy. From Agustín, then, the memory, through those confessions that recorded his memories, was heartbreakingly beautiful, because there is beauty in what we retain from the past, just as there is horror, loss and nostalgia. Big ideas or big passions tend to compete with concrete facts from the past and everything is concentrated in feeling. Therefore, personal diaries and memoirs are not the same. In the first one there is a daily record, data should be highlighted, while memories are selectively operated on with what was kept or considered, I will not say important, but with relief that it is not forgotten. However, in both there is a sequence in one way or another. The diary, although it works from the record, also follows the flow or rails of the life moment of the diarist. The memoir has a great emotional edge because it dealt with events that were disturbing at the beginning and can only be seen in perspective at the end.

But there is a third way that escapes the diary and memory. It is an unprecedented form that was celebrated by the French writer Georges Perec in his book I rememberwhich has an epigraph of gratitude, which reads: “The title, form and in a certain way the spirit of these texts are inspired I remember Joe Brainard. Perec follows Brainard and explains that his writing process works on “a fairly simple principle: an attempt to bring to light an almost forgotten, irrelevant, banal, common memory, if not to everyone, at least to many.” It is precisely in banality, in non-transcendence, that Perec’s fragments of memory work. His book includes memories of the type:

183: I remember being mistaken for a student named Bellec.

209: I remember that in the jungle bookBagheera was a panther, Mowgli, a boy, and Bandarlogs, monkeys (but what were the names of the bear and the snake?).

357: I remember Email Diamant toothpaste with a singing bullfighter.

And so on until four hundred and eighty – let’s name the noun: – meacuerdos. The book ends with several blank pages on which the reader can write his own. The consequence of this book is that as soon as the reader advances in Perec’s memories, he immediately begins to remember his own and writes them down. This leaves a document that would delight micro-historians like Carl Ginzburg. But the best is the vital intensity of those who record something “banal”, minimal, which is a kind of tip of the iceberg or a very short story that has a long history behind it.

Like all parents, I take hundreds of photos of my children, but perhaps I value my own memory book the most, in which I record insignificant things, gestures or words, which hide the story or show it, but which, word for word, either speak of did my daughter make up the word “calm down” or that on August 20, 2021 she said “I’m closing the door so the lightning doesn’t come in”, or that my son had me in January 2021 if you could “adopt a cancer”. So, adding what they arbitrarily said or did this or that day, the survival of moments on the edge is guaranteed, those that make us laugh or leave us confused, and give that bubbling intensity to a world that is used to crushing dinosaurs, but leaving bones, footprints, I remember are.

In a Platonic dialogue set in Egypt, King Thamus warns the inventor of writing, Theuth, that it would produce oblivion because no one would remember from himself. Could be. However, the memories written by others fulfill the invitation and kindness to remind ourselves of our own lives. (OR)

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