Sentimental Value

a diary entry on a lyrical day

— a lighthearted reason for why we keep things close. Just something sentimental… a sauce-stained receipt from Speedboat makes me taste a flavor my life currently doesn’t. To dream of having that again. Beyond its flimsy mundanity is the hard truth that living relies on re-living. We don’t let go because otherwise how would our existence make sense? Albeit shaky, these typo-beaded text messages in baked pixels are clocks that keep time; these smudged and torn scribbles and photos with toothy smiles are sediments in which pieces of ourselves become history and therefore unfadable.

When I lived in Lima for an intensive Spanish course, I was fascinated by all the familiar things through re-knowing them in a different language. Ciel was no longer the expanse I had stared at every day, and mariposas finally broke out of their chrysalis and took flight. It’s seeing snow for the first time the thousandth time, realizing the question after hearing its answers. As a reminder of that reborn fascination, I bought a hand-woven rattan butterfly magnet, which now perches on a floor lamp by my mother’s reading chair.

There are boxes and boxes of capsuled moments: ceramics I’ve collected everywhere I travel because they’ve been toughened by a homegrown warmth yet only moldable in softness; books I bring on the road and fill with train tickets, boarding passes, and thermal papers covered in foreign words. I ascribe so much meaning to them, as if pressing is protecting, keeping is what makes Pinocchio real.

Lovers keepers. Keep with caution for it contains immense sentimental value. Risk change upon keeping. Risk tears upon opening. Risk breaking upon re-living. Keeping is a choice but only perceivably so. Memories are always about survival. It’s nothing, I shrug, putting away the shoebox. Just something sentimental.

Jan 18
Kentish Town, London

sitting across from Mini while writing this :)