Sunday, February 2, 2014

I have not blogged for some time and the winter ice and cold  has limited my 
taking photographs. A few weeks ago I came across some cards based on 
Nick Bantocks's Griffin & Sabine Trilogy. If you have not read it it is the story
 of a couple who have never meet exchanging cards and letters when they
 discover they have a "magical connection" They basically tell each other 
the story of their  lives and then begin to share the stories of their current 
travels. The stories are accompanied by postcards, letters and stamps with 
striking images. I have to admit I liked the third book the least when an 
antagonist was introduced and a more conventional plot was introduced. 
I preferred just hearing their personal histories and the narratives of their 
travels.  I had not been rereading them  long before I began to sense a 
connection, at least for me to the works of W.G. Sebald and I reread my 
copy of Austerlitz, his works largely avoid conventional plot, consisting 
instead of personal histories, chance encounters, descriptions of places seen 
while traveling or snippets from his reading and he includes B&W photos 
in the books.

Both authors dealt with personal history, art, conversation, descriptions, 
memory and I think convey a sense of what I, at least, feel in the internal 
mental dialogue we conduct with ourselves.

For my quotes I have chosen one from Sebald's Austerlitz about how the things
 that comprise our mental landscape will fade with time and the second a quote 
by the astronomer Martin Rees about how much our memories mean in the great 
scheme of things.


“...the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as 
I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly 
lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as 
it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects 
which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never 
described or passed on.” 

Austerlitz


"Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans 
who watch the sun's demise, 6bn years from now. Any creatures that then exist 
will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.” 

2 comments:

WildBill said...

Some heavy reading here! Still important to remember history so that we are not doomed to repeat it. Right?

Guy said...

Hi Bill

That would be the case however we do seem to repeat it all the time. But at least if you have done the reading you can see it coming.

Regards
Guy