MEMORY

We build our present upon memory; it defines the moment as surely as our will, even will is not chosen without reflection, and memory mirrors our every backward glance, no matter how fleeting and furtive, no matter how we try to curtain it with reason. And those memories upon which we construct our lives are often the retrospective recognition of mistakes we made and the moments we lost, the possibilities we did not recognize, the signs we did not see, the words we did not hear, the chances we did not take.

Our lives are complex works of art whose patterns and form, when they do not elude us entirely, are derived from error and which we choose to execute in those mediums with which we are least adept.

Memory.

As time and circumstance fade into memory, definition and detail, color and texture begin to blur like the sequential recession of hills fading in a distant landscape. But we view our past in discrete moments of clarity that stand in sharp relief against the misted background of a vague before and after. And the sequence of those images which we hold in perfect preservation may or may not match their sequence in any reality other than that which our memories construct, since they exist without the context of an immediate past or future reference to define their truth and validity. Nonetheless, it is these few crystalline moments with which we create our past, our personal history. And how differently might we perceive our present selves if we had chosen other moments to retain, other images to preserve under the bell jar of memory?

O the paths we pick which lead us further from our intended destinations...