The house we build for our memories to inhabit sometimes is a large one, with rooms and floors aplenty and countless closets and cupboards, some of them placed there on purpose in the original blueprints, and some just having materialized there at some point, unknown to us and without our consent. These unintentional spaces are necessary too, dark and crowded corners to give contrast to the airy and cosy living rooms of the mind, to complete the peaceful and harmonious surroundings for our momeries to dwell in, and to thrive in.

But what does it matter where our memories live if we never visit them? I can’t hold memories in my head, they leak out and disappear, vanish into ether, or at the very least change shape and derange as time goes by. My being consists of things I’ve experienced, feelings I’ve felt and thoughts I’ve thought and although I don’t actively need to revisit them during my daily routines I’d still very much like to keep them somewhere safe where they can remain untouched by passing time.

And my mind definitely is not such a place. It is capable of carrying the most basic and profound recollections of experiences that have shaped me but all the nuances tend to fade away and entangle with other similar memories. These nuances are what gives hues to colours and depth to flavours, the ability to remember little details surrounding the Big Things. These nuances add flesh to an otherwise barren skeleton of the Self and breathe life into shapeless clay the lasting memories are moulded of. So these nuances are pretty fucking important, come to think of it, and these nuances are so easily and quickly forgotten, unconstant and ephemeral, that they need a warm and secure home.

The house of my memories therefore needs to be made of words. And these words need to be written down regularly enough to maintain a sense of bigger picture and to contain as much of what I might like to revisit in the future as possible. This occurred to me as I skimmed through some of my past blog entries recently, surprised at how soon the everyday things get forgotten, and how much delight they can bring later on if I was fast enough to write them down in the first place.

Thus, a conclusion: I need to update this blog more often. Each entry testifies that the past was not just shapeless and grey blur. Reading about what a particular sunset looked like and how horrible a specific wine tasted brings the original memory back, sometimes vague and sometimes sharp, but back nevertheless. And that’s what matters. Most of the things that feel too prosaic now are not so in the long run. Especially if I adorn them with adjectives fascinating and colourful enough.

This might be a good place to include a picture of me and The Loved One, on a moonlit beach after an unforgettable late night dinner in an exquisite restaurant. Just in case I forget, and because it was lovely.