christine kofman photography
how do we find each other again?
A real wise guy once believed, some 2,400 years ago, that writing things down could make us less wise. Plato enunciated this concern in Phaedrus, loosely translated as follows: “[T]rust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, discourages the use of memory. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we’ve lost something here, and we’ve forgotten ourselves over the centuries; maybe we’re the sort who let noble truths tumble from our pockets at the roadside while generations shuffle along.
Or maybe he’s wrong, and he’s a creature of ego just like all of us. Maybe when we let go of his attachment to memory, even just for a moment, the long poem takes shape in the air before us, simply because we’ve let it out to breathe. We don’t need to remember the words, because in the best parts of ourselves, we couldn’t forget them if we tried.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, Jenn Wilson and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
