Calasso or Llosa

     The quote I am looking at today could be found in either Calasso or Llosa: "Memory is a snare, pure and simple: it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present."

Both Calasso and Llosa understand the complexities of memory and the value behind stories. Calasso gives us multiple versions of the same story depending on the source he chooses to use. While most of the stories are similar with subtle differences, it is the memory of the original author we are trusting. However, Calasso knows that the original action and memories can change depending on the lens one chooses to view them through. With each reflection from the truth or the original, the story changes shape altering in form to fit what will be known as the truth for the time. The way I see this is there is an original, I will use a painting for this demonstration. So, this painting has its original form, but when looked at in a mirror, it shifts and alters from how it was seen at the beginning. Add another mirror and the lens changes once more. Multiple mirrors could be added with the same results, each time there is the original, similar yet different. For me, the mirrors are the storytellers altering the original story to fit what they can remember at the moment of the retelling. It is similar, but not the same. The principals stay the same but the details shift to create something new.
     This quote is actually from page 95 in The Storyteller, yet it could have been an any page in Calasso. Mascarita tells every story from memory, yet his memory is from what he has learned from someone else. He tells the stories the best he can--better than anyone else in the tribe--but it is his version of the truth, his memory. Yet before Mascarita became the Hablador, memories were slowly being lost in the sands of time. These memories were the snare or noose, tightening over time choking the life out of the tribe.  The Machiguenga people were forgetting the past, an action which was proving to be the death of the tribe. With the help of Mascarita, the tribe could once again unite to hear the stories of the past, or at least one version of it.