History is hysterical:
it is constituted only if we consider it,
only if we look at it—
and in order to look at it, we must be excluded
from it.

As a living soul, I am the very contrary of History,
I am what belies it,
destroys it for the sake of my own history
(impossible for me to believe in “witnesses”;
Impossible, at least, to be one…

Camera Lucida Reflections On Photography by Roland Barthes, trans. by Richard Howard, pub. 1980

Roland Barthes name has come up occasionally in my philosophy readings. Barthes was a French literary theorist – a philosopher of language, of social theory, of Marxism. Motivation at last reached that tipping point of action, so I purchased a used copy of Camera Lucida. . The 117 pages of Barthes rumination on photography so far surpasses whatever I paid Amazon. The title means “light chamber”, a optical tool to assist artists to draw, using mirrors or a prism to project an image.

The lines which are quoted above were provoked for Barthes by a photograph of his mother. He is haunted by an essence of his beloved mother, something that eludes his grasp. The image is a fragment of a time prior to the time of his existence and memory.

No merely “interesting” thought, this! A tectonic, ground shaking idea perhaps!? That is, the meaning of events, or of a life, can only be thought, or written about in retrospect. You cannot know the meaning, the telos of anything due to the inevitable throes of improvisation that creation demands.

Without a backward look, the gaze over the shoulder you cannot make sense of anything. Does Barthes suggest that what matters most is that I attend to the quotient of my own life, my self-relation as well as that to a circle of family and friends? Certainly the look-back is important too.

Light! More light please in my light-box of time.

From the leavings of every transpired event, I am constructing what will become “history” for my progeny. What materials are at hand? Why dwell in a dark cellar, the light is poor, with fetid air, piled up with hoarded ideas of self-loathing and racist projection? Many presently labor away in such places.

I have a photograph of my father captured when he was fourteen years of age. The year of the photo was 1925. His manner of dress is that of early 20th century. I imagine the person I presently am, could have known dad at that juncture in his life.  Dad grew up poor, an only son with three sisters. He had no memory of his Dad. Not so unusual though. Many grew up poor. They still do today, hand-to-mouth, only one parent.

I see sadness and kindness in his eyes.

I suppose that is what he left behind for me.