Monday, November 12, 2012

Luggage




PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  When I was a small child I used to think it was possible to remember everything, and that somehow that continuous flow of memory was me. I couldn't have been much more than five when I conceived this universe. "Conscience," was still a notion too abstract; the memories flowed with no effect on guilt or pride, though I seem to recall worrying about space. 

I especially enjoyed remembering dreams, whether glowing or haunted, but it couldn't have been too long before I discovered troubling gaps in the memory stream, and sometimes I experienced déjà vu moments welling up from oblivion. Clearly, I had been fractured.  How much of me was missing? Where had it gone? If it continued, what would be left?

I think that by age seven I'd forgotten to worry about the stuff gone missing, and was more concerned about the things I couldn't seem to lose. Friends tell me I'm reaching an age when I will be grateful to remember anything at all. It's funny how memory is.