The Lost Library

Is there a space for memories that we have forgotten?

It is time to set down the heavy weight I have carried for quite some time. I have been looking for something new to read. For a while now, I have been reading the same stories, they follow the same format, the same script. The thirst for something fresh, something that sparks meaning is high.

I have often consoled myself by saying lovers of history know that it is a game of playing lost and found. There is a time and place for certain stories. Recollection is an endless loop that carries on with or without me.

While I see the fissures in the mainstream, the sudden bloom of identities, speaking up, and calling out what is. There are still some histories that have grown tired of playing the game, of trying to make themselves known. They exist in the quietness, the corners we do not feel the need to turn to.

Maybe there is a comfort that comes with existing in the shadows, many a time it is safer where you are not seen because it requires energy, it requires limitless courage to carry these histories on our shoulders into the open where they may find acceptance or not. Have we stopped searching for history beyond what is already familiar to us? Are we content with the libraries full, we do not want to acquire new stories?

What is written

I grew up hearing the tales that were passed down generations — some that happened, some that might be myths, and a few aspirational fantasies that were undeniably hard to shake free of. But every time I stepped outside the house, I was reminded that this was not the norm.

I was also reminded that the world does not bother with differences as much as it does with similarity. That is until different becomes the norm or a statement. Despite the uniforms we were told to wear there was no uniformity in who we were. Choice too felt like privilege until it was fought for.

This might be the fault in our stars, but I belong to a culture of fireside stories, histories that never really made it to books. I was content with that history, those folktales as is, until I entered a vast world where I was a student. I made the mistake of trying to find my history on shelves of massive libraries, that in my head contained the entirety of the world. Ideally, they should have.

My peers seemed excited to find what they were looking for, their reflections in the looking glass. Imagine looking in a mirror but not finding your resemblance staring back at you. You would assume you did not exist. But you know your existence to be true as the sky and the earth. Sometimes forgotten history, unheard stories, unrecorded, feel a bit like this navigating a busy world.

The truth revealed itself to me with time, when I could find anything about obscure places on the planet, contained in volumes, neatly written, translated, with maps to visualise them that were true to size. That was the all-important acknowledgement of ever existing that my identity was lucky to receive.

I never found my history in these libraries, in any encyclopedia, or a copy of Tell Me Why. A stray book on a lone shelf, whose credibility can be questioned from time to time maybe, but no massive project. Anything remotely available was never written in the same format by authors or historians from the land.

The scratch on the surface of my history is so tiny, I cannot see my roots. I watched the stories fade from oral to lost. It happens in a single generation. I used to hear the stories as a child, replete with errors of human memory, but history fades too. Dates, places, names, all the bones of history buried under the weight of our humanity. It starts with a slight blur, and then the broken or outdated lens that we never update.

I wonder how many people, how many communities have we forgotten over time? A childish part of me still believes these works exist in some lost library, lost to time, lost to power.

Finding the lost library

We hear about the genre of ‘folk’ — movies, art, music, literature that carries roots. There are faint echos I hear now and then, of heroes told in ritualistic performances, of ancestors who once lived full lives. Their names passed down to future generations like heirlooms, they are remembered in last names and first names, recalled on festive days or days of great happiness, or sadness. Jewellery that stood the test of time, and by far my most favourite most tangible memory, memory that is sensory — recipes.

Slowly, I see a revival as the thirst for something deeper grows. The anguish of not remembering and of letting yourself disappear in the crowd begins to feel like too much of a sacrifice. That is when I realised the lost library I conceived is not a brick building, containing everything the world forgets on dark, dusty shelves visited only by the curious. They exist in people, in their lived lives, their identities defying the norm.

We believe in archives of a singular kind, the contents of which should be categorised. But not all stories are meant to fit into boxes, they were never written for the page. Some were written into language, some were expressed in rituals, in song. A library then is too small a space to contain it all.

I still remember when I was pointed to a part of the lost library, in the depth of the hills, in the middle of a forest tucked away from prying human eyes. Untouched shrines that had seen wars and worship, existing in our time, lonely, desolate. The emptiest, best protected part of the library. There is no feeling that compares to come by a story, sat somewhere in the midst of us, if we are willing. Who said magic does not exist?

It reminded me of how far we might need to go in search of stories, how far there is left for us to go. I wonder what we will find there. A library like no other, existing in all of us in some way.