The crux of the problem

"I think it was during this journey that the image became detached, removed from all the rest. It might have existed, a photograph might have been taken, just like any other, somewhere else, in other circumstances. But it wasn't. The subject was too slight. Who would have thought of such a thing? The photograph could only have been taken if someone could have known in advance how important it was to be in my life, that event, that crossing of the river. But while it was happening, no one even knew of its existence. Except God. And that's why-it couldn't have been otherwise-the image doesn't exist. It was omitted. Forgotten. It never was detached or removed from all the rest. And it's to this, this failure to have been created, that the image owes its virtue: the virtue of representing, of being the creator of, an absolute." Marguerite Duras, The Lover, p. 10.

Bibliography of unread books

Hard at play: Leisure in America, 1840-1940 (GV53.H32 1992)
Elsner, John & Roger Cardinal eds. The Culture of Collecting.
Daiken, Leslie. Children's Toys Throughout the Ages.
Jackson, Emily. Toys of Other Days.
MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class.
Nicholson, Marjorie Hope. The Microscope and English Imagination.
Margolin, Victor. Micky Wolfson's Cabinet of Wonders: From Private Passion to Public Purpose. Design Issues, 13(1), 1997.
Impey & MacGregor. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in 16th and 17th Century Europe. (AM40.A2 075 1985)
Arnold, Ken. Cabinets for the Curious: Looking back at early English museums.
Schramm, Helmar. Collection, Laboratory, Theatre Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century.
Asma, Stephen T. Stuffed Animals & Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums.

Bibliography of Read books

Cook, Olive. Movement in Two Dimensions. London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1963.
Love,LL., & Sheldon, PS. (1998) Souvenirs: Messengers of Meaning. Advances in Consumer Research, 25, 170-175.
Laliberte, Norman and Alex Mogelon. Silhouettes, Shadows and Cutouts: History and Modern Uses. New York: Reinhold Book Corporation, 1968.
Sayer, Philip and Caroline Sayer. Making Victorian Kinetic Toys. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1977.
Blom, Philipp. To Have & to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors & Collecting.
Stafford, Barbara Maria. Devices of Wonder.
Saltzman, Lisa. Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art.
Smith, Richard C. Art and the Performance of Memory.
Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Post Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Hirsch, Julia. Family Photographs: Context, meaning, and effect. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1984.
Duras, Marguerite. The Lover. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.

Do you believe in false memory? How do you know what you think you know about the past? Where is your proof? Don't say photographs; they lie and you know it.

I miss and miss and miss. I don't know if there is any way around it and instead of looking, I freeze. I stop at missing. Is there anything after that? What if I stopped missing you?

No one knows about this. It's just between you and me right now and I'd like to keep it that way.