My memory’s faultiness and durability keep puzzling me. Faulty recall first: I had to let time do its work this morning—i.e. slower chemistry in the brain—before I could remember on the bike lane, far up on the slopes, the name of the author whose angry mockery of the Supreme Court judges I had appreciated just half an hour before when reading today’s New York Times on my iPad: Maureen Dowd. I also enjoyed her use of two curious words—pervy for Thomas (a pervy liar...), and suspire for M. Monroe—, even though I shouldn’t allow myself to be overly enamored of Ms. Dowd’s vertiginous lexical vaultings. It could be argued that her own jealous anger at the Clintons and her fascinated tolerance for Trump deserve a bit of damnatio memoriae. Didn’t it cost as many votes to the Democrats as her present article might reclaim? These two words I didn’t forget yet, however, perhaps because of the work that goes into figuring out their origins (pervert and French soupirer). So, there goes a durability of sort, as well as a faulty self. I find it hard to graft new memories, a well known phenomenon. And then, while reading Tales of royalty, a recent book on Mesopotamia, I am surprised to discover that I remember right away very useful stuff such as the name of the wool dress that kings wore in Sumer—kaunakes—, for instance that of Urnanše, king of Lagaš. I could also instantly remember when and where I learned it—in 1967, in the books of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, a cool fifty-five years ago. I doubt that I used this word ever since…