Memory and Memories.

The knowledge that each second that ticks away is a fragment of memory forgotten is creeping onto me. In an hour and a half, I have had my dinner, finished unpacking and bathing. Through jets of warm water, there is an urgency to increase my pace, for my hands to slather soap quicker. Through dinner, there is a desire for bigger bites, faster chews, greater gulps of soup. In unpacking, there is a need to run behind to throw my insect-repellent-ridden clothes, to pack my bags in the cupboard with immediacy.

I want to document everything through photos, through writings like these. I am taking extra glances around and hoping to bring the atmosphere with me. I want to be able to write down every thought that I feel during sharing sessions, every laughter that surfaces in long walks. At every stop and at every new experience, I have a desire to photograph that moment because I need to pack that away with me. I am certain that I would remember this retreat in Ubin, of cobwebs, standing with icy cold water splashing down and a fluorescent light slapped above in a slipshod manner, of wires, of forsaken Chinese New Year goodies, of walks, of beautiful sights. I am greedy and afraid that I might come to forget the thought attached to single particular moments. I am fearful that when I think back two weeks later about the quarry, I will only remember the depth of it, the blueness of the water and the stinging heat but forget the thought that I held in my mind for that few seconds.

In a paradoxical way, I am punished for my appetite for memory. There is a compromise on the present as I try to build an entire bankbook of memory for my future self. It is inculpable but perhaps too foolish. I demand too much from memories, I want the thoughts in each singularized moment to stick with me like a clamshell.

So there is a constant fluctuation between the phobia of the wholeness of a moment forgotten and the belief that a memory strong enough would accompany me, with its entity and totality. While I am being swung around like a pendulum, retrospection whispers that there is no controlling of memories and if it stays, it will in its entity. If it does not, it was not worth its entity. For the night, I shall remember last night, with rain pouring down on the Aluminium roof, cats screeching in the wakes of the morning, curling up inside my sleeping bag, while the rest sleeps around me, in fatigue and contentment.