Somewhere Less Than Heaven

“A memory is what happens when something happens and does not completely un-happen.” Edward De Bono

The sensation of the sun hitting your skin, that warm embrace of another, that feeling of being home. These are what come to mind when I remember my childhood trips to Malta with my grandparents. So much time has passed, yet these little fragments have stayed so vivid.

I’ve often wondered where these memories go when we are not remembering them, a land somewhere deep within our mind. A place where some find refuge among the decay, whilst others are laid to rest in a kind of limbo.

Since my grandfather’s passing in 2014, any tangible connection to Malta was severed, but it became a place that imbued all of my memories of him. As time passed, I had this ever-growing desire to return and attempt to reconnect with what I may have forgotten.

My will was to retrace my footsteps and return to this land where my memories reside and piece together anything that could resemble these fleeting feelings. To search and to find these fragments that I could hold onto, piece together, set in stone and make last forever.

Hoping to open a flood of memories, I travelled to Malta, but only found an eerie sense of the familiar. Trying to re-trace my steps to find places from my past. But with each step a tide of new experiences began diluting the image in my head. The place in my head, was only in my head. Picking apart the smallest of details and following the thread as far as I can go. Collecting images to replace what’s lost, to build a shelter, a construct, a space within my mind, where my memories can reside. To preserve the things I cherish and the feelings I don’t want to forget.