The first entry into the Massachusetts State Archives offers one a brief glimpse into hundreds of thousands of packs of archives on the shelves, silently bathing in the glory as the witness of the old times. Breathing the “dust” of the archives of a past century, I have keenly felt the “drive” that pushes every historian to possess the very moment of a glittering past. (Steedman 1159) The temptation, awakening from the minute you intrude into a world which has been invested with the most ardent imagination, is so hard to resist. The “feverish desire” to “recover moments of inception, beginnings and origins” is rekindled with the intensive immersion with all these miraculous survivors of history. (Steedman 1160)

 

I opened the file documenting “Project Interact”, the one related to the ingenious interactive planning between regional vocational schools and community colleges in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Leafing through the yellow pages of the report, my thoughts were transferred to the days back in 1974 when the representatives of several schools were gathered for the sole purpose of studying “ways of articulating and coordinating programs and resources between regional vocational schools and community colleges” in the state of Massachusetts. (1-1) Certainly this is another official record which intends to inform the generation to follow the educational level of the former period. Another milestone in the history maybe. Like the pearl on the string, these highly remarkable events dotted the way of history. It strikes me suddenly to think about the past which, under the general agreement between each of us, seems to be decorated often with the most extravagant words. In the historical course dominated by the huge events, there seems little space for the ordinary. Their voices are drowned while their images are reduced to mere obscure shadows “anonymously submerged in history”. (Farge 92) By overlooking the ordinariness that makes up no small part in the historical past, we trick ourselves into believing that is all history is about.

 

Farge’s words in The Allure of the Archives have inspired many thoughts on me. One point she mentions provokes me to dwell my thinking on some related issues. The judicial archives of the eighteenth century, she argues, are the “accumulation of spoken words” whose authors “never intended to be authors”. (Farge 7) But there does exist a lot of archives which have ever been collected “with an eye toward history”. (Farge 7) As the former ones are most likely to reveal some truthfulness of a buried past, the latter may seem to be more susceptible to the impact of power and authority. The pleasure of expecting an encounter with the real past is completely destroyed in front of those which have been preserved for the very reason of leading our way through the path pre-designed. The exploration needs to be made on our side, not on theirs. We, navigating through all the possibilities of recovering a lost past, want badly to have an access to those archives like the judicial ones of the eighteenth century, which record the “rough traces of lives that never asked to be told in the way they were”. (Farge 6)

 

But the way of discovery is never meant to be easy. Archives can be intimidating sometimes. The huge packs of documents right in front of the eyes increases one’s anxiety over the tremendous job to decipher these records as well as to speak to the past. The distance between the archives and the historians can be tricky sometimes. If one becomes too “absorbed” with them, one loses the chance to “interrogate” the archives. (Farge 70) It is much wiser to keep a distance from the archives within a reasonable stretch to remain tolerably sober towards them. The truth is also hard to get. There is no way to assert the finality of an interpretation. The historical narrative is but a “construction”, “not a truthful discourse that can be verified on all of its points.” (Farge 95) As history itself is “endlessly incomplete”, there seems to exist some doubts about the reality of truthfulness that could ever be possessed by us. (Farge 98) But no matter how far the road can be, we are ever approaching the end of hopefulness although the days in the tunnel of darkness can be desperately struggling sometimes.

 

My imagination seems to run wild. The folder right before my eyes puts me on the track of the ordinary lives of an ancient past, remarkable as it is maybe. These fragments of history reveal to the readers the day-to-day existence of the ordinary, who intended the least to leave their own traces to a world that comes after. But as we read these files, the dead spirits of the ordinary seem to come to life again. There we find the very place where we can “bring about an exchange” with the “departed past” while “enter into unending conversation about humanity and forgetting, origins and death”. (Farge 124) It is the most intriguing encounter we can ever have with the lost past.