In my time I have on numerous occasions built up a library of books and then facilitated their escape. As an undergraduate I accumulated a modest collection  but when I finished my time I went into the quadrangle of the college and broached half-strangers, asking them if they wanted to pop into my room and choose some books for free. That way I could go and live in Paris with just a travel bag.

I reaccumulated in Paris. At one stage I moved apartment and a colleague saw my boxes of books and said Can I borrow some? I said yes and she drove off with a couple of boxes. After six months I said Can I get those books back? She said Only if you come round for dinner?  That was a demand I was unwilling to comply with. Those books escaped.

When I moved from Paris to London after thirteen years I left my books in boxes in someone’s apartment. My friend Max ferried them back for me in his boot and dumped them in my flat in Bethnal Green Road. One or two of the boxes remained behind in Paris. Those books escaped.

Recently my flat in London has become overstocked with books and I had the idea to gradually transfer some of them to the library at work. I had shifted about fifty in the last couple of weeks and planned to move more. On Friday I noticed that the books I had moved to the library had been taken. Stolen is the word. At present there is an investigation as to who might have taken them, which will be futile. More books have escaped.

They are bits of you. They flake off like bits of you over the years. I suppose it’s all in the way of things.

http://www.peoplearerubbish.com

Memory is a big story in my life. If you work with language, you juggle with language, your own and any others you might have picked up, you are constantly scouring for words and expressions from the past, all drenched with the lived life of the time.. I no longer keep a diary of any sort, electronic or physical, with the intention of keeping my memory active. Is my memory less good because I am older and have more in the box to sort through when I look for something? Some words I block on. When I look for them I must panic internally and they just don’t come. They tend to be abstract words. For example: autistic; empiricism; casuistry; placebo. I have been trying to remember these words for years. When I look for them I suddenly get lost in an little internal labyrinth. I tend to remember the rhythms of words or quotes without recalling the words themselves. I have what you might call a musical memory. My partner has a photographic memory. She sees something and retains the picture in her mind’s eye However, she will forget something I say from one moment to the next. This could be because I am am easily forgotten Leave the door open, I say. All right, she says. Three seconds later she will slam it. She also has a poor emotional memory. She cannot recall how bad her stomach acid was after an argument. Her brain eradicates all memory of a difficult experience. You are what you remember, which means that you are forever being eroded and chipped at. In the end all your angles are ground down and you resemble a smooth stone like all the other smooth stones on the landscape.

http://www.peoplearerubbish.com