I have been thinking a lot about memory lately. Someone very dear to me had an attack of amnesia this week, and while it has passed, all is fine, it is so strange to be reminded of the fragility of recollection. I have a very poor long-term memory, and have for a long time. Entire events, entire eras of my life lost in a mist. I try and revisit the books and films most important to me about once every year or two, so I can restart the timer on how long it is until I have only the knowledge that a work is something I love, something that formed me as a person, with few details of its content left to cling to. The list of things I have forgotten is long, written in languages I once knew. I try to write things down, I take a lot of photographs, I am lucky enough to have friends who will remind me of our funniest stories by telling someone new. This photograph is from seven or eight years ago, about the distance when my sight gets truly hazy — worsened in that era by gaslighting and abuse and overwork and undersleep and mental health and the wrong medication and self-medication and and and and and. Sometimes I feel like I have made the same mistakes over many times (how can you learn from something you barely remember?), but sometimes, like today, I look back on the past and I realize that I am no longer the person in this photograph. Yes, sometimes I feel desperate and afraid and ill-equipped, sometimes the limits of my own mind close in or bow out like warping metal or a photographic lens coated in oil that I can’t wipe off, yes. But I am stronger now than I was then. I am stranger now than I was then. I am older now, and for that I am grateful.