Chronesthesia

One day, I found a couple journals in my house. These journals were left by someone that was close and dear to me. Contained in them were many things that happened when we were together including emotional expressions written in them.

The individual human memory is an episodic memory. It represents the accumulation of impressions, including past activities, feelings, experiences, as well as specific times, places, and emotions combined together. A smell, a song, a dress, a photo. Humanity relies on memories. It is mental time travel.

I have several notebooks that carry a few years time; they are what drove me to start this journey. Taking one of the notebooks and a camera, I went to the starting point of our life together. It is as if time has not been here. I slow my footsteps watching and roaming amongst the memories, my thoughts crossing time.

What I see now, and what I see in my mind are in different time zones. Tying the camera on my chest closest to my heart, each moment is accompanied by my heartbeat and breathing. I close my eyes, and press the shutter. The memories merge with the present into a picture. The past us, our time, laughter, disputes, sweetness, letdowns—all of these things are combined into a time capsule.

The famous Chinese writer Eileen Chang, in the preface to the Chinese translation of American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson's work, writes “He believes the past is the mother of the future. It is the foundation of the future, and to reform the past, one must first understand this concept. He is convinced that transformation must start from an individual.” We do not know the future, not even the next second. However, the future is an infinite imagination.