How many lost memories are in this universe? How many moments which "lasted forever" are long gone and forgotten? A memory is perfect, in that it remains untainted, untarred by the passing turmoil of corporeal life. But as the past's crust hardens, remembering becomes painful. Like tearing into a stubborn tangerine with the flat part of your thumb, you startle at the durability of its skin. This resistance brings a faint glimpse of the realization that the threshold into the past is more and more out of reach. Just like many a nice memory, you want to hold it, squeeze out all its juice. For sometimes, reality is just too cruel. Or inconvenient... As your finger presses feverishly through the orange peel, you feel the cold, familiar rush of the fruit's wet inner life, relieving the pain caused upon your overworked thumb. Like a drug, it offers relief, easing out the tension, temporarily untying the knots of your own disturbed soul. For a moment, the contrast is so great, like in a black-and-white photograph: ironically, a relic of the past. From shade to light, white to black, pain to shelter, present to past. How much can one take this abruptness? For how long can one hold on to a memory, to the negative of an unyielding present? or perhaps the positive? Well, perfection is neither positive nor negative, it should not matter in the end. And yet... The further the memory drifts off, the more difficult it is to conjure it. Such perfection should not be touched, we say to ourselves. We will let it live on its own terms, somewhere in the undefined parts of our brain; there is enough storage room for all which is perfect. We will not let it affect our everyday life, our imperfection. So... Is perfection really necessary? does it find a place in our lives? They say that the true sign of love is when you start liking someone's blemishes, or... imperfections. Presence is stronger than the absence, yet the lack of presence sometimes overpowers its negative, in which case it becomes the presence. So when presence is negative and anti-presence is positive, everything which isn't becomes great! What a sad realization... The tangerine stands untouched on the table, its crust hardening by the second. On the outside, nothing ever changes, yet inside is the unattainable perfection of a Dali painting... or of a dream... or of a memory... of you.
