Memory believes before knowing remembers.

[Light in August]

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

And so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgias are born.

She could sense it very clearly: for me, no less than for her, the past counted far more than the present, remembering something far more than possessing it. Compared to memory, every possession can only ever seem disappointing, banal, inadequate ... She understood me so well! My anxiety that the present 'immediately' turned into the past so that I could love it and dream about it at leisure was just like hers, was identical. It was 'our' vice, this: to go forwards with our heads forever turned back.