***** [T]he man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today's ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them. Epic and rhapsodic in the strict sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through. (Walter Benjamin, "Excavation and Memory," _Selected Writings_ Vol. 2, 1927-1934, trans. Rodney Livingstone, et al., ed. Michael W. Jennings, et al., Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1999, p. 576) *****
Yoshie