Dear Jenny.

14 July 2011

Dear Jenny,

Sometimes I think a certain place belongs to me.

If I am dearly attached to somewhere, I refuse to read anything which some other people have written about it. No description, comment, criticism, not even admiration is acceptable to me because it will never resemble the way I remember it. I think they have no right to do it. I feel offended as if my memory has been trampled by a stranger who knows nothing about anything about me. The place belongs to me, just as my memory belongs to me.

What happens to most people is that they remember, and then bit by bit they forget, however hard they have tried to secure things in mind at first. I seem to experience it the other way round. I am forgetful. Things slip away easily and quickly through the tiny fissures of my brain until I start to become skeptical about whether it's real or just my own imagination. But then pieces and pieces of them return with even better clarity and vividness. Every so often, they find their way back to me in dreams.

In time, memory takes care of itself and brings back what is finally worthy of keeping. Experience is meaningless. It's the residue that counts. It's like it does not matter how much you have learnt at school, it's about the knowledge that is still intact after forgetting.

As I am writing you this, flashbacks with colour and sound correspond with my words in my mind. People are freaked out (somehow I think they are too excited about it lol) by the end of the world. I am not quite sure about this but I think it's okay if it is really to come because of the roads I have taken and the wonders I have seen with my own eyes before the end of time.

I gotta stop. I am running out of energy after a long day.

ivy ;)

P.S. Please return the census questionnaire by post asap if you still haven't done so!