naberiie:

naberiie:

working in an archive is like brushing elbows with ghosts

like this: sometimes, it’s the handwriting. sometimes you realize that a woman in 1912 wrote a journal entry every single day for a year, even if it was just “beautiful weather today; went for a walk in the park.” or letters covered in cramped or curling or stained handwriting, and you can tell where the writer was stressed (the pressure of the pen, ink stains along the paper), or the stains (wine? tears? blood? oil? something else? there’s a story there, hidden in the pages).

or sometimes it’s what the person decided to save. posters or ribbons or tickets. what they tucked into their books and journals. pressed flowers sewn onto the pages of a scrapbook that’s nearly one hundred years old, fading ink detailing the date they were picked. those little glimpses of lives long gone. tapes and programs they decided to save. applause from a 1932 commencement speech, fading into silence. it gives me chills to sift through these remnants, these memories – because those things meant something to someone, somewhere, once. they might be gone, but these items contain echoes of them. even the small or niche collections – there are stories everywhere.