When I say, I often think about how we record, I mean I think of it all the time, compulsively and obsessively. Humans live, and when living is not enough, we record our lives—in words, in pictures, in art and in film. We want more than to be alive. We want to be remembered as we are, and we want to look at how we were.
I sit, sandwiched between the bed and a stack of blankets on a night so cold my fingers struggle to find the correct keys. I’ve typed all words with errors; then, I have erased them to write them correctly. It will probably take me twice as long to write today, but I will do it regardless. It is almost ridiculous when you think about it. Almost. Then, human as you are, you would understand. Why must I record these bookmarks? I have earned the right to ask this question now that I have spent a year, shy of a couple of weeks, writing them. Why should I remember all these days without any detail about my life? I wish with the right to ask this question, an answer would have arrived too. But things and life are seldom as straightforward. Something in me tells me this will be important. For what? I do not know yet. All I know is that it is a question for another day, and I have an inkling that the answer will make me stop in my tracks someday years from now, and then, I will ask the question.
That is often how things happen: in reverse, in an indirect, frustratingly roundabout way; like how you only know the warmth of the sun on a cold night as this one, like how you only know love when you realise you have none left, like how you understand how crucial the beginning is when things are about to end.
Things have a tendency to work out like that, but they tend to work out after all. Convoluted as it is and haphazard as it stands, there is nothing more glorious than this meaningless life we are compelled to record, generation after generation, people after people.
It is a night so cold that every breath I exhale is visible even inside the room, but here I sit, writing with fingers that have overshot their mark about a thousand times. There is something in this, too.