Precious paper I did not have, so I opted for a photograph.  Not an old photograph, not a photograph I don’t have the negative for, not even a photograph housing beloved faces.

The photograph I chose is precious because it makes me feel weird whenever I look at it. So I put it up on my wall last year.  The weird way this photograph makes me feel changes over time, depending on how my memory of that moment changes.    Memories are skittish creatures.  They don’t stay put.  I constantly, and consciously, tinker with my memories.  I enjoy trying to change my mind about things past, things that no longer matter, except that my present reaction to them makes me who I am.  If I can change my mind about a particular memory then I can be a different person, in relation to that memory.

Why write on a photograph?

Why not write on a photograph?

I wonder if fixing words forever to the surface of a photograph might also mean fixing, with language, the memory the photograph pretends to capture.  Those fixed words might finally push me to make up my mind about that moment.