Souvenirs
A souvenir is a memory. Some memories are precious, some are painful. Some are forgotten. Some are always there, like an ache under the skin in damp weather, half remembered, half buried. A scar is a souvenir. A broken bone, healed but still with the hairline trace of fracture visible under an X-ray, is a souvenir. A damaged organ, half decayed but limping along, is a souvenir. Some souvenirs are pushed to the back of the shelf and gather dust, and when we finally take them out and look at them after many years, they don't mean to us what they meant when we got them, if they mean anything at all. Sometimes, when the context of our lives changes, the souvenir we thought was precious now seems ridiculous, or tawdry, or monstrous. We want to throw them away, but we can't. We think we have discarded them, only to come back to the shelf and find them still there, gathering dust, collecting meaning or meaninglessness or just taking up space until finally we are gone and somebody else comes along and says "What trash! Throw it away!" or "That's nice! I'll keep this." Whatever they meant to us is gone. Now my souvenir is somebody else's.
These works are souvenirs.
