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 | Kristian Klockars memory quartzDear David My contribution to the NOW time-capsule consists of a fingernail-sized piece of quartz-stone. As representant of a timely now a stone is particularly well-suited. It is rock-hard in consistency, thus remaining the same throughout many nows. It also carries with itself the natural history of the earth up into the present, while also revealing the anguish of our deadliness as human persons, since it will remain there after we all are dead. A piece of stone thus becomes narrative, or rather perhaps narratable, since it may be connected to so many things. Narration is, however, also particularisation, and this piece has a very particular relation to the present. It is cut out from a larger, hand-size cubic piece of quartz that I found on a shore as a ten-year old boy. The 'original' piece, that is to say the one I found, was subsequently split into two, and its other half is lost. I have the remaining quarter on my bookshelf in my living-room. With a slight feeling of anguish, of doing violence to something, I took it and cut out the little piece in question. To the narration of the original stone there should be added a strong memory of my uncle, who died a year ago, in September 2002. He was a geographer, and he was the one who told me and my cousins that this shiny, golden stone was in fact a piece of quartz, which to a ten-year old sounded almost like 'diamond'. Thus we had made a real discovery, found something that had value, and thus made me feel that I had experienced a 'now' of a certain kind. It turned out to be an experience that I still remember as yesterday. My uncle Henrik Osterholm was one of the first real environmental activists in Finland. In the 1970:ies he negotiated with local industry in order to inform them about their real interests not to pollute the environment, a decade before the green movement gained real force in Finland. Thus, the personal connects up with the political, a memory, present in the now, in which a certain idea of 'a political act' is living on. The piece of stone on my bookshelf still waits for its second half to return, but now it has also been internally separated and given rise to a third piece. Perhaps the most important thing is not unity, but to long for unity while simultaneouly keeping all the wounds visible. October 2003 Read other contributors' letters:
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  David C. Wood | Professor of Philosophy |
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