Of all the horrors Hell had to offer in R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, this is the scene that shook me.

This has awakened two fears in me: the fear of forgetting, and the fear that what mattered will vanish without proof. Nothing new at all. Actually, I feel like I have looked at the surface of the River Lethe three years back. I blogged about it here.

So it’s a full circle moment after reading Katabasis, when I allowed my mind to drift too far away again that I spiraled over a Pochaco playing deck a friend gave me 30 years ago, and rereading this blog entry from 2022.

Well, now know I’m not losing my mind, and I don’t have a degenerative disease. I had a bout with anxiety that closely intertwined with grief and awareness of impermanence.

Gods, I fought so hard to stay present.

This unsettling scene of memories glimmering and disappearing in the River Lethe taught me that remembering is not always gentle: it overwhelms, it arrives without mercy, and it comes in the most unexpected times.

And when remembering happens again, I know: not all memories need to be accessible to be real. Not all love must be retrievable to have mattered.