I'm going to try to find a copy of "The Balkans" asap. Regarding the Kaplan book, William Dalrymple has a newish book called "The Golden Road," which goes into how those monsoon-powered trade winds made for a trade route that was even more impactful than the glorified Silk Road. It was fascinating. I enjoy his history and travel writing immensely. I think you'd really like him.
The older I get, the more I think memory is the best kind of evolving narrative precisely because I can’t fully trust it.
It changes over time.
Not just the facts—the emotional architecture surrounding them. Certain wounds lose sharpness while other details, once irrelevant, suddenly become central. Entire meanings emerge years after the event itself.
That’s what fascinates me about revisiting old notebooks and journals. The page stays fixed while the interpreter mutates.
Before my coma and six-month medical leave, I wrote this line down after seeing fungi growing in darkness:
“We’re afraid of the dark because of how things grow in the absence of light.”
At the time, I thought I understood what I meant.
I didn’t.
Or maybe I only understood the smallest available version of it.
The fungi disappeared long ago, but the meaning kept reproducing itself inside memory. Illness changed it. Recovery changed it. Returning to familiar places as a different person changed it.
Heraclitus asked whether we can step into the same river twice. I sometimes think memory itself is the river: unstable, self-editing, carrying new sediment each time we enter it.
Which is why travel writing—and maybe all writing—never really finishes.
I also think memory is self-editing. Part of that might be wanting to believe that we were a certain way long ago, when in fact we weren’t. Or that other people said or did things to us that they didn’t. As you state, the written word betrays our post-production changes.
I had a discussion recently with someone I traveled with 20 years ago. We recounted particular incidents and found that our memories of them were different in odd ways. It was as though seeing an event filtered through two different personalities. Who retains the more accurate version? For things that weren’t written down, we will never know.
Oh, the fact that he sorted through, and digitized his archive—that's a heroic feat! I can't bring myself to do it, even though I understand it would greatly enrich my resources. And it would simply remind me of the past... But it's such a feat! 😀
I'm going to try to find a copy of "The Balkans" asap. Regarding the Kaplan book, William Dalrymple has a newish book called "The Golden Road," which goes into how those monsoon-powered trade winds made for a trade route that was even more impactful than the glorified Silk Road. It was fascinating. I enjoy his history and travel writing immensely. I think you'd really like him.
I’m always up for another book focused on the Indian Ocean. I was able to find a copy of Dalrymple’s book just now, so thanks for the tip!
The older I get, the more I think memory is the best kind of evolving narrative precisely because I can’t fully trust it.
It changes over time.
Not just the facts—the emotional architecture surrounding them. Certain wounds lose sharpness while other details, once irrelevant, suddenly become central. Entire meanings emerge years after the event itself.
That’s what fascinates me about revisiting old notebooks and journals. The page stays fixed while the interpreter mutates.
Before my coma and six-month medical leave, I wrote this line down after seeing fungi growing in darkness:
“We’re afraid of the dark because of how things grow in the absence of light.”
At the time, I thought I understood what I meant.
I didn’t.
Or maybe I only understood the smallest available version of it.
The fungi disappeared long ago, but the meaning kept reproducing itself inside memory. Illness changed it. Recovery changed it. Returning to familiar places as a different person changed it.
Heraclitus asked whether we can step into the same river twice. I sometimes think memory itself is the river: unstable, self-editing, carrying new sediment each time we enter it.
Which is why travel writing—and maybe all writing—never really finishes.
I also think memory is self-editing. Part of that might be wanting to believe that we were a certain way long ago, when in fact we weren’t. Or that other people said or did things to us that they didn’t. As you state, the written word betrays our post-production changes.
I had a discussion recently with someone I traveled with 20 years ago. We recounted particular incidents and found that our memories of them were different in odd ways. It was as though seeing an event filtered through two different personalities. Who retains the more accurate version? For things that weren’t written down, we will never know.
Oh, the fact that he sorted through, and digitized his archive—that's a heroic feat! I can't bring myself to do it, even though I understand it would greatly enrich my resources. And it would simply remind me of the past... But it's such a feat! 😀
Actually, I could hardly believe I was spending so much time at it. I just had to trust that it would be meaningful in the end.