you don't really know where to begin.
there's just so much to sort through.

you brought your bike, a camera,
and a tripod you didn't even end up using.

why are there so many people here at midnight in the middle of winter?

you feel like you're there, small again, peering through glass at your own past.

the memory comes back to you, but where does it really come from?

from stories you were told of times you're too young to remember? or maybe they're manufactured, slowly, over the years from looking at these photos.

maybe you don't remember this day after all, and what you thought you remember is just some other abstract day you went to the beach as a kid.

when you dreamt of the beach again last night,

and when you wake up in your bed,

it's still dark out,
some indiscernible hour of the night.

[ The House ]

but it feels strange and unfamiliar to you.

there was a moth in your room last night.

it flies around aimlessly, from white wall to white wall.

it draws its own shadow on the wall, bumping it here and there. you don't really like moths, but you let it be. you feel bad for it.

hopefully it finds its way home again.

you sense the old house through these few photos,
just bits, a backdrop really.

a glimpse into a place gone,
ground now into the forgotten foundations
of a strange, unfamiliar place.

something draws you to this place,
but you can't quite put your finger on it,

like a dream escaping the edges of memory.

are there any more records of this place?

are you sure you want to retrieve these memories? there may be a reason they are not in your record.

Forgetting can be a mercy.

yes. please retrieve.

retrieving...

no, that does not feel right.

what would you like to change?

it feels like it should be smaller, not as wide. no garage, and the trim should be a darker green.

...

you stare at these images, willing them to fill the gap in your memory space.

but there's a cold unreality to them.

where are these memories from?

I generated them for you.

you feel slightly sick, dizzy.

it's not your memory at all.
a stranger's front garden, a tree on the side that never existed.

it's all pixels scraped from somewhere, stitched into a image of nowhere at all.

What makes this record fake,
and the others not?

The very act of choosing what to document,
and what not to is dishonest.

the image has never been a true index, you concede.

it's as fallible as any memory.

but this takes it too far, and you reject these records of the house.

some gaps are better left that way.

[ The Weight? ]

you don't have the words right now,
sitting in this pool of memories.

you sift through them, like grains of sand running through your fingers, trying to find some semblance of your past self, the you who took these records once ago.

but it's an unending task.

there's duplicates upon duplicates, random records of moments that didn't matter, and gaps of the ones that did.

maybe you should start clearing it out, but there's just so much accumulated that you don't know where to start.

at some point, you'll run out of memory space, and what then?

your life a page that never turns, unless you choose something to forget.

maybe the choice will come easily to you.

but if you can't bear to let anything go, and you can no longer remember anything new, perhaps you'll find yourself coming back here again.

selfishly, i hope you do.