Recollection — or the practice of the presence of God. The ideal is to have this running constantly through the day. The point is not to try to feel God’s presence but to recollect that, like the present moment, you cannot get away from it even if you try.

To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off

أتخيل انفعال كائنين يلتقيان بعد سنوات. قديما تعاشرا، فيظنان إذن أنهما مرتبطان بنفس التجربة، بنفس الذكريات. نفس الذكريات؟ هنا يبدأ سوء الفهم: ليس لديهما نفس الذكريات، كلاهما، يحتفظ من لقاءاتهما باثنين أو ثلاثة مواقف صغيرة، لكن لكل منهما ما يخصه منها، ذكرياتهما لا تتشابه، لا تتقاطع، وحتى كميا ليست قابلة للمقارنة: أحدهما يتذكر للآخر أكثر مما يتذكر الآخر هو له، أولا لأن قدرة الذاكرة تختلف من شخص لآخر (مازال هذا تفسيرا مقبولا من كليهما) لكن أيضا (وهذا صعب التسليم به) لأنه ليس لأحدهما لدى الآخر نفس الأهمية. عندما رأت إرينا جوزيه فى المطار، تذكرت كل تفاصيل مغامرتهما السابقة، لم يتذكر جوزيه شيئا. منذ الثانية الأولى يقوم لقاؤهما على عدم مساواة ظالمة ومغيظة

For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.

"It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one's self back in that kind of mood, but I do see it; I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing "How High the Moon" on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could ever improvise the dialogue.) The other one, a twenty-three-year-old, bothers me more. She was always a good deal of trouble, and I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.
It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about. And we are all on our own when it comes to keeping those lines open to ourselves: your notebook will never help me, nor mine you."

إن شئتُ أن أنسى .. تذكّرت !

I wanted to remember in order to be able to return.

قوة الذاكرة تنجلي في التذكر كما تنجلي في النسيان

How comes it that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted to the same person?

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need — not all the time, surely, but from time to time — to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember — the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.

"[from "On Keeping a Notebook"]: It is a good idea to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about…I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not…Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point."

It appears, then, that there are six lesser forms of aids to the memory; viz.: the cutting off of infinity; the reduction of the intellectual to the sensible; impression made on the mind in a state of strong emotion; impression made on the mind disengaged; multitude of points to take hold of; expectation beforehand.

النسيان شكل من أشكال الحرية

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.