Aide-Mémoire 7 - The (de)(con)struction of self

I was chosen as an attempt, a desire, to prolong the past, continuing a fragile conviction of recalled beauty. Filled with life, I brightened the place wherever I was. In the presence of the sun, my apparent timeless ceramic surface was light brown with a shining decoration of color supporting leaves and stems; reflecting the reality that is no more. Like locks of hair, I held the flowers and guided their leaves along my defined bends and curves. Those descriptions of me started to disappear as time went on and the inevitable reality within the absence of the past caught up to me. It feels like a change I don't have control over. As if my appearance is fixed on external forces. My light brown surface lost its brightness as a consequence of the occluding windows I was put behind, and the beauty I meant to represent died in the absence of flowers I meant to hold up. I am a vessel now, empty and forgotten, reflecting a sense of uselessness. This robbing of previous relevancy created a void of emptiness sensitive to new purposes, as the absence of application coincides with the presence of possibility. The world around me had changed, and new times dawned. No matter how hard I try to hold on to my past virtues, I experience chaos in the absence of bygone reality and feel grey clouds surrounding me. Where my opening once held water and stems of life, it is now desolate and collecting grey ashes, reflecting the internalization of the present darkness that surrounds me. I am now caught up in actuality, and the struggle to persevere in the beauty of the past I have lost. Acknowledging the power of directionlessness and its intimate relationship with change instils in me a trust and confidence in the insecurity of the future. “I have come to realize that the development of emptiness (call it freedom) destructs the past, deconstructs the present, and constructs the future, (de)(con)structing the self for change.”

(de)(con)struction