Scent / Iwona Germanek

Scraps of images briefly cover my eyes, as I wander down paths leading through places distant from me in time. Halemba – the town of my childhood. I haven’t been here for 40 years. I walk indifferently on these roads that are no longer mine, look around me and step by step get closer and closer, touch traces of the past, of what is gone, and yet stuck so deep inside me. Sun coming through leaves, already turning golden, brightens up the darkness of unremembering. And yet, with every click of the shutter, I see more clearly. The negative in my camera records moments of the present, and I take these light notes home and “sew” them together into images that are hidden somewhere within me. Atlases of thoughts are created, woven from memories, from photos, from my affections. These are maps of unremembrance.
 
We remember not days but single moments. We remember fragments of dreams, scents, sounds. It’s fascinating that our brain preserves this information without asking our permission, or the reverse, blocks our access to it, without consideration for our opinion. Sometimes this frightens me. What will happen when my memory refuses to show me my memories? And what if one day I won’t be able to remember the current moments? Faces of my loved ones? If time flows backwards for me instead of forwards? How will I function in the world then? What will this world of mine become? Will anyone be able to recognise and define, somehow determine it? Who will I be to myself, when I’m deprived of memory? Ever since my mom got dementia, this fear has been with me constantly.