Collection

Absent City

Change! New houses rise on old landscapes, like new events overwritten onto memories. Memories are fading, and my recollection is so poor. It’s fading and seems to be completely gone. My mechanism of forgetting works so smoothly. I’ve encountered many sad things, so the past gets automatically erased, just like how the body recognizes toxins and eliminates them on its own.

If anything remains, it’s the faint shadow of memory, what Pautovsky calls “fragments of fog.”

Somehow, memories are always more beautiful than the actual experiences. The past is something we can’t hold onto, like gripping the hand of the one we love. I will forever lose the past, no matter how hard I try. It’s like picking a flower in the meadow. It wilts, and you can pick another one. But that wilted flower, even though it has faded, will always be a special flower in my mind—unique, with that particular color, that particular scent, irreplaceable, never to be found again.

Are these days still the same as those from the past? Am I still sitting here, close to the old school, near the familiar streets, scribbling and sketching something?