Wednesday 3 September 2014

Michael T. Stowers








"It's these modalities which hook me. That's how it feels, like hooks with those little barbs on them that prevent the fish from unhooking itself, those 'hads' and 'shoulds' and 'woulds'. Life is, as you know, woven out of a million threads, 999,999 of which end in one of those hooks.

...

Time. Such issues with time. To me, you see, your assertion that the past is unredeemable is the opposite to my reality. For me, the future is the only unredeemable thing. The present is the persistence of evanescence. The past, though, is the only part we can change. And we do, all of us, all of the time. Memory is around seventy to eighty percent fabrication; we know this now. Add the rose-tinted glasses and the exponential fall off of memory and you get a situation where the past becomes more story-like than any myth."


Michael T. Stowers




We would often fight about the all-time-is-unredeemable-motto of the Bridge, whose constant and passionate supporter he had been ever since he first came here, in march 2011. It deeply irritated him and time and again he would try to convince me of the contrary. His sudden death, on the 29th of August, has left this debate open (or closed it forever, it depends on how one wants to look at it). Perhaps it is exactly through this shocking disappearance that he has been proved right: the future may be the only unreedemable thing, and my memory has already begun to fashion the story of him, of our close friendship into a myth, an ever-shifting tale which has become part of my ever-shifting self.


I would like to say more, but words fail me.