The Necessity of Memories

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands 

Of all the houses here, of all the houses I can see that is, I have a definite favourite. The walls, the horizontal wooden boards, are a vibrant turquoise. And the roof is that rusty orange, brown of corrugated iron. It’s the nearest house to the back of the hotel, and I can just make out the painting of a giant sunflower in the front room. From what I can see, the garden is full of interesting things; there’s a little bit of dry-stone walling, and a bare tree trunk about four feet tall. There is a large hedge to one side, with a set of ladders propped up against it. On one of the first days that I was here I saw a woman wearing a sunhat standing at the top of these ladders trimming the hedge back. For a while after I was slightly concerned – the ladders were still there, the hedge trimming not completed, and I’d seen no sign of the woman since. I tried to reassure myself that someone would have noticed, her husband at least, if she’d fallen off and was lying in a heap on the ground. Nevertheless, I was quite relieved to see them both out in the garden this weekend just gone.

The house reminds me of the time I spent in New Mexico – 3 months back in 2008. It doesn’t remind me of the houses there, but of the local turquoise jewellery, the turquoise trail that runs from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. And the roof of this Falkland Islands house is the colour of the earth in that now seemingly distant US State. This is a specific house, and that was a specific memory, but I started to realise that the triggering of memories was imbedded in where I was. After a while, I noticed that this place to which I had never been before started to feel oddly familiar. It all began to remind me of something, and it was such a strong reminder - like the nostalgia of a childhood Winter. But try as I might I could not place it, and it was then I began to wonder if it was simply the memories of a few days before. While I’m not sure for certain, this idea was nevertheless an interesting one to me. It made me think about the importance of things that have happened in the past, and about the necessity of memories. We look not only for connections to each other, but connections that run and weave like water throughout our own lives. In a strange place or situation, we above all want to feel a tie to something or someone. And I wonder if, during times of great uncertainty our memories become the things we live for. When any concept of the future has been almost entirely erased, our hopes must find a place to settle elsewhere. And the only place to go is the places we have come from. We take comfort in the way things were. Our memories are our hopes, and these memories sustain us. The thought that we can be with and hold our loved ones once more.

Hold on to your memories, for one day your memories will become your dreams.