old portraits

"memories are like a still life painted by ten different student artists: some will be blue-based; others red; some will be as stark as Picasso and others as rich as Rembrandt; some will be foreshortened and others distant. Recollectionas are in the eye of the beholder; no wo held up side by side will ever quite match."

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It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? ~Lord Byron

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i just finished a thought-provoking book that dealt with memory as an underlying theme. memory, in it's ephemeral state...it is fragmented and not empirical, but we define our lives based off of those fragments, treating them as objectivity.

it's strange, the things we remember. a memory is never a video filmstrip. it's not even a photograph...perhaps just bits of a photograph. a flowery scent, an off-key note, the silhouette of a long-lost friend. we can't force ourselves to remember; a memory is a separate entity with its own soul and its own volition. it chooses when it wants to resurface, however belated or inopportune that moment may be.