Cool memories

In New York, just over a week ago, I walked into the Strand bookstore and picked up a copy of Jean Baudillard's "Cool Memories". It's a book I have borrowed from the library numerous times, but I felt compelled to buy it there in NYC as the resonances were full. The book is a successor to Baudrillard's previous book, "America", in which he extolled the experiences of visiting America, and "Cool Memories" relates the sense of disillusionment at his realising that in "America" he has written his best work and no inspiration in the future will help replicate its achievement. Leaving America behind after my short trip put me in a similarly disillusioned state, making last week one of the hardest in my recent memory. Back to my old job in Monday morning, sent out into the M4 wilderness immediately, and my heart many thousands of miles away, lapping up a city of sweltering energy.

Work began, and my body remembered. The body has a memory of its own, which can subvert the mind and its sense of ownership of the control of self. I thought I was ready to take on the terrors of life in the capitalistic trench, my mind felt rational and prepared. Yet, upon returning, my body detected the familiar pressure of the work place, it remembered the unhappiness of the long days, the lack of all else in life... and I must confess, to my shame, I was a little afraid.

My abiding memory of my trip to New York? Besides the Frick Collection, the Guggenheim (the Oteiza exhibition especially), and the Met; besides wandering through the Village, observing people in their myriad variety in Washington Square Park; besides Central Park in all its greenery...

Friends who began in virtuality, in word and in grammars of estrangement, became flesh on what would have been an otherwise unremarkable evening. They were just as I had imagined them, and yet utterly different at the same time, an assessment that took time to reach... it was an unprecedented kind of happiness, partially relief, partially desire to persist. Incomparable, and memorious.