Circles and Squares

It is not only that the entire world in those photographs has vanished, but also that I have been transformed in a profound sense and could not fit back into that world even if there were a means to transport me back magically to that time. This statement may seem like a painful reiteration of the self-evident. But the truth is that, like it or not, I have spent countless hours imagining what it would be like to travel back. And louder calls out Proust, “The only paradise is paradise lost.”