The past, blurred. 

Although I was not much of a photographer in my youth, devoted readers may still be able to recognize a structure about which I have written previously [Here], a once noble mansion in the French Empire style on a hillside with cows outside of Fremont, Ohio.  This is the rear view.  As a boy I had dreams of restoration, historical preserrvation, a return to former glory, as they say, but alas, the place finally burned to the ground.  

Remembering the past, I start with place.  Memory begins with landscape.  Then architecture.  Then I add people later, when I can.  I'm not trying to not remember people, I just need to situate them first, associate them with, place them in the proper setting.  As you might imagine, this becomes more difficult when the landscape changes.  Plus, I'm not getting any younger.  I need all the help I can find.  I tend to forget.

Banks seem to be having trouble remembering too.  Not just people (not surprisingly) but places too.  Banks are now forgetting the assets they foreclosed on.  Remember hearing about people who couldn't pay their mortgages and were just walking away from their homes?  Well, now the banks are doing it too.  They are calling the practice of banks forgetting "Bank Walkaways." 

This is not just happening in Ohio, either.  A friend of mine, a pro bono lawyer, writes:

"I have a client with a condo in Florida that was foreclosed.  The bank couldn't sell it.  The bank returned to court, filed a motion to vacate the foreclosure and stated in the motion that my client and the bank had reached an agreement for repayment. 

The judge vacated the mortgage. 

There was no such repayment agreement.  There was no knowledge on my client's part that the bank had done this until a month after it was completed. 

My client's ownership and all attendant responsibilities have been restored.  He is now getting tax bills for the worthless property that the bank took from him 18 months ago.  The bank's bill collectors are now harassing him.  The bank wanted out from under the worthless asset so badly that it gave back the house and lied to the court to do it."

Then my friend writes a very very bad thing about what we should do to bankers, which I cannot repeat.
 

Remember what I was saying the other day about "Fiction"?  Apparently there is a lot of fiction going around.  As you know, my mother did not approve of this kind of fiction, of people who didn't tell the truth and made things up.  When she heard about it, she would say they ought to be ashamed of themselves.   Of course, somehow I doubt these bankers are ashamed at all.

What makes me sad, however, since I am fond of the American landscape, is how this sort of fiction threatens it.   Being attached as I am to certain kinds of architecture, (the domestic variety mostly)  it is hard to see it being lost and abandoned, forgotten and left to decay.  It makes it harder to remember.  You begin to feel like you are losing not just the houses but the people who built them and lived in them.  You may remember eventually, I suppose, but it takes a while. 

What I am beginning to wonder, though, is whether it is ever possible to just get up and walk away.  Because if you can, then the questions we might want to ask are on a much larger scale.  As for instance what this means for the collective memory of us as people, and the effect on the spirit and soul of the landscape we inhabit.  It strikes me there may be consequences to all this forgetting and walking away.  Seriously.

I mean, can you walk away  from the truth?  Really?  And how far can you get?