Memory

I follow a vague memory.

at the age of three, scribbling in my father’s cigarette pack.

The letters were not symbols or secrets,not something to touch with second thoughts.

They were ancestors.

They were already in me.

 

Before school began, the stimulus of literature had already stirred

starting a clunky dialogue with a world of images,

a freak world,

where the word and the image collided in improvised dreams.

A camera soon entered, confusing my clear mind

with new realities,

liberating my body and senses

through expensive lenses.

 

I remember with my eyes.

Media became memory.

Drama, improvisation, and subjectivity wrestled with collective truth.

All of it felt like a dream of dreams.

A celebration.

A fiesta.

A party with too many guests, drinks, and cookies.

 

Later came emancipation.

The realisation that the unconscious carries weight—

alongside our seemingly rational choices.

Neither calls for authenticity.

Both simply are.

 

Normality waits behind the wing curtains,

on each side of a colourful stage that resembles the universe.

And this stage—this living, shifting theatre—

mutually defines both the actor and the world.

 

I am one of its players.

One of globalisation’s children.

A former smoker

who quit one quiet afternoon

along the Thames.

 

 

Rotherhithe, London  September 2009