A Perspective in Time

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Nobel prize winner in literature for his book "100 years in Solitude" ..

In one of my "suicidal" attempts to the bookstore i bought his book "Strange Pilgrims" which is basically a collection of short story. In his prologue he talks about how difficult it was for him to write those stories and how long it took him to finish writing this book.. actually one of his stories was dated 1979 ! Anyways... he mentioned that writing a short story was as difficult as starting a novel.. its the first few chapters in a novel that counts for everything else.. a short story to him was like those few chapters..

Because his stories mostly took place in European countries.. he decided to "revisit" those cities hoping that it would help him with his story writing.. you know like you'd see the place and remember things.. and thoughts would trigger a new story... but this is what he wrote..

I wanted to verify the accuracy of my recollections after twenty years, and i made a fast trip to reacquaint myself with Barcelona, Geneva, Rome and Paris.

Not one of them had any connections to my memories. Through an astonishing inversion, all of them like all of the present-day Europe, had become strange: True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. This meant i could not detect the dividing line between disillusionment and nostalgia. It was the definitive solution. At last i had found what i needed most to compete the book, what only the passing of the years could give: A perspective in time.

A Lost Dot:
When facts are only a memory.. and a memory is merely a fact ..