Manuscripts, writing, life
You, me, to some extent we are all palimpsests of our lives. We carry with us remnants of the past, moments that glimmer through now and again, moments that inform or underwrite in some way the lives we live now. Moments from another time, another history, another person. We are composites.
The word itself, palimpsest, comes from textual studies. In ancient and medieval times, manuscript pages were made of vellum or other similar sturdy material, and the making of them was not cheap. If the writing from one place or time was deemed no longer worthy of preservation, the page was scraped or washed clean of that writing and made “new again” for a new layer of writing. Over time, that earlier writing would often begin to surface again, peeking through here and there in shadows letters. The resulting page, with this layering of new writing over old, is known as a palimpsest.
It is an inexact metaphor, but a poetically fitting one, for writing and for life.
Our lives are like palimpsests. We are the palimpsests upon which life writes. And writes and writes. Yet we are active, too, in this remaking. We are the vellum, the pen, the washing away and the re-inking. We are the maker and the made.