Liveable Acreage

Gordon Burn has a marvellous meditation on nostalgia in today's Guardian Review, linked to the fading relationship he has with Newcastle in the wake of his father's death. His quote from Toni Morrison in the second to last paragraph sums Burn's thoughts up:

"They straightened up the Mississippi river in places, to make room for houses and liveable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. 'Floods' is the word they use but in fact it is not flooding, it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has perfect memory and is trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that; remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place."

Well worth taking the time to read the whole piece.