The Go-Between

The past actually is a closed book. It's tantamount to Yom Kippur where the Book of Life is sealed, on a yearly basis. It's not that one can't remember specifics. Rather the feeling is similar to examining an antiquity --say the Ming Dynasty princess on the porcelain base of an old lamp you've grown up with. Remember the case of the Florida man who fell into a sinkhole while he was lying in bed? You may be caught unawares by the pasf. Bergson called it "involuntary memory" lest one "forget" the Proustian "madeleine." Bergman's Wild Strawberries is  a journey. Supposedly the professor is being honored. In fact, he's swept back into another sometimes unwelcome world of recollection--that's both hauntingly vivid and reeking of impossibility--filled, as it is, with chances missed snd turns not taken. Which past do you prefer-- the chronological timeline or the  sometimes haunting nightmare in which one struggles to remain afloat? FromThe Go-Between: "the past is a foreign country."

read Mark Segal on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo"

and listen to Joan Baum's NPR review of The Kafka Studies Department