Introspection

Moments scatter and disappear. Sometimes a memory surfaces. A glance, a smell, a silence. Flash perceptions that rise and vanish as quickly as they came. Masks form as identities bend, shaping what we choose to show the world and what we keep hidden.

Life seems chronological, yet memories move on their own terms. They drift, return, or fall away. Some settle in quietly. Other memories come back with force, vivid and insistent, in full color. What lingers after everything else collapses tells its own truth.

More than fifty years ago, loss entered my life without warning. The quiet that followed shaped how I learned to see. I tried to understand what was missing by paying attention to what remained.

Within these traces are the threads we hold inside and the spaces where presence once lived. What stays beneath the surface is the self that appears when the performance falls away.