Summoning Other Moments

From California Exposures: Envisioning Myth and History, with photographs by Jesse Amble White (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020)

We can think only in the present moment, but the present moment is always awash in memories and ideas produced by the past. At least professionally, historians try to discipline themselves and remember that because no moment is inherently more important than any other, no moment can give a complete view. Their sorcery is summoning other moments. History is looking into the tangled and devilishly complicated connections among an infinity of moments. The relationship of those moments is what matters.