Lee Utterbach

Lampedusa left important papers, parts of manuscripts, and real money stashed in books on his bookshelves, often not remembering he'd done so, it's said in the preface to his novel, "The Leopard," published after his death in 1957. I like to think Lampedusa knew exactly what he was doing and just wanted to leave some surprises to those who outlived him.

I'm now thinking that forgetting is at least as important as to remember, that the ability to forget is as precious as memory. I don't mean not to take responsibility--responsibility needs to be taken in every case and it's god to know as much about the past as you can--but to give the mind permission to enter a room without remembering why the room was entered in the first place. We forget for a reason, something along the lines of the concept of the 'constructive paranoia' Jared Diamond  believes necessary to survival, whether we live in  primitive or more technologically advanced circumstances.

This is exactly what's really remarkable to me about aging: that I'm pretty much continually reaching the point where I know it's probable I may have forgotten more about my life than I now know. In other words, I'm in the prime of my life, having more to forget than to remember but able to remember the things necessary to keep living and to live the best life I could possibly live.

When I saw the name Lee Utterbach on the front of the building yesterday in San Francisco, there was something about the sensibility of the typestyle the name was set in, the elegant forlorness of the building itself, like it knew that certain aspects of the past are just so real and so good they have to be preserved though no one can really live or do business there anymore--a little like a composition by Robert Ryman. The place spoke to me enough for me to want to take a picture. I was sure I was seeing some part of myself that I'd lost touch with, though I was almost as sure I'd never seen it before.

Lee Utterbach (Cameras Inc.) closed its doors in 2010, moved to Petaluma, and is liquidating its inventory.