44

[womzilla]

She said: What is history?

And he said:
History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

He said:
History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards
into the future
And this storm, this storm is called Progress

--From "The Dream Before (for Walter Benjamin)", Laurie Anderson, 1989

The past is where things which are now broken were then whole.

Addendum (lit: Thing which must be added): I was going to give my mood as "the pain of remembering", but found the etymology too estranging not to quote in full:

New Latin, from Greek nostos return home + New Latin -algia; akin to Greek neisthai to return, Old English genesan to survive, Sanskrit nasate he approaches