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On the train, I found a paperback at the bottom of my bag.
The bookmark is tucked in at page 112.
How long has it been since I read it?
The beginning of summer, I think.
I open it.
Not one character’s name comes back to me.
I can barely remember what the story was about.
And yet I couldn’t bring myself to pull out the bookmark.
I wonder why.
The weight of a bookmark
I could just start over from the beginning.
I know that, in my head.
But I have a feeling that page 112 is waiting for me somewhere.
There are things like this at work, too.
An email saved as a draft.
A proposal file closed halfway through.
A sticky note that says “Do later,” still stuck where it was.
I no longer really remember what was in them.
But now and then, out of nowhere, just the sense of them comes back.
Finished things are neatly forgotten.
Only the unfinished ones stay, somewhere just behind your shoulders.
A café, a hundred years ago
Berlin, in the 1920s.
A psychologist, it is said, was watching the waiters in a café.
The waiters, the story goes, remembered the orders that hadn’t been paid for.
But once the bill was settled, the order apparently vanished from their minds at once.
From this, a hypothesis was born.
People remember unfinished things better.
Named after the researcher, it came to be called the Zeigarnik effect.
In 2025, a meta-analysis was published that re-examined nearly a century of research.
The story turned out to be a little different.
People don’t necessarily remember unfinished things better.
Even so, the tendency to return to what was interrupted remained.
Whether or not they remembered it.
Even forgotten, the hand reaches out
Perhaps it was never a question of memory.
There is also a report that making a concrete plan reduces the stray thoughts that unfinished goals bring.
A bookmark, perhaps, is a small plan, too.
The rest, another time.
It wasn’t abandoned.
The rest was simply left somewhere.
Closing-time music
That Friday, on the way home from work, a colleague said,
“Want to shoot a little?”
The third floor of a mixed-use building in Kannai.
We opened the door: cool air, and light falling only on the tables.
I took hold of the cue.
Nothing goes in.
Again, nothing goes in.
Still, my colleague is laughing.
After a few more shots, the balls began to roll, a little, where I meant them to.
The closing-time music comes on.
Three balls were still left on the table.
Where the cue ball sat.
One I could probably make.
And behind it, one hiding.
“Guess the rest will have to wait till next time.”
I put the cue back in its case and went down the stairs.
Back to page 112
The next morning, I tried to recall that layout.
Where had those three balls been?
Honestly, it’s already hazy.
Still, one thing remained: wanting to shoot that last ball.
I take the paperback out of my bag.
I go to meet, once more, the characters whose names I’ve forgotten.
I’ll probably go back to that table, too.
Though the three balls won’t be there anymore.
I don’t remember, and still I want to go back.
I open to page 1.
The bookmark is still tucked in at page 112.
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
References
- Ghibellini, R. & Meier, B. (2025). Interruption, recall and resumption: a meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 962. doi:10.1057/s41599-025-05000-w
- Masicampo, E. J. & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683. doi:10.1037/a0024192
