Ink and forgetting

Abstract Examining the relations among ethnographic fieldwork, trains in Tokyo, dementia, and a child's injury, this essay explores the nature of memory. Specifically, it considers the vastness of what is forgotten, how writing can staunch the loss of recollection, and the condition of being unable to forge new memories. The written word can carry the freight of memory, yet it does so through simplification and suggestion. While bearing the indistinct character of writing, fieldnotes inhabit a wider ecology of quotidian life and extraordinary events that, in turn, shape how, when, and if they are read. Recollection with the aid of ink, paper, and pixels is vital to the ethnographic endeavor, but its affective dimensions are largely involuntary and can only be shepherded from a distance.