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Tuesday 31 January 2012

The inviolable past

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
 Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (translation: Edward FitzGerald)

In remembering every day of my life, it is an advantage that past days are inviolable: nothing can be changed of a day lived.

It strikes me from time to time running back through the memory tags that now fill nearly a month and a half of my mental calendar that those tags will remain until the day I die. 

I can expand on the image to remember other things that happened that day. I can reinterprete the experiences. The past can guide my future actions. But the day is done and cannot be undone.

This makes the process of remembering easier, but is also a sobering reminder that the most animated of days is frozen forever as it becomes the past.

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