Barthes, Roland. A lover's discourse: fragment.

One day, I shall recall the scene, I shall lose myself in the past. The amorous scene, like the first ravishment, consists only of after-the fact manipulations: this is annmnesis, which recovers only insignificant features in no way dramatic, as if I remembered time itself and only time: it is a fragrance without support, a texture without memory; something like a pure expenditure, such as only the Japanese haiku has been able to articulate, without recuperating it in any destiny.

The imperfect is the tense of fascination: it semms to be alive and yet it doesn't move: imperfect presence, imperfect death; neither oblivion nor resurrection; simply the exhausting lure of memory. From the start, greedy to play a role, scenes take their position in memory: often I feel this, I forsee this, at the very moment when these scenes are forming. This theater of time is the very contrary of the search of lost time; for I remember pathetically, punctually, and not philosophically, discursively: I remember in order to be unhappy/happy- not in order to understand.