It was dusk and the ghost mountains were dissolving into grey ripples lapping against the darkening sky. The stars were out early and the half moon hung in the sky like a skipping stone, impossibly smooth. I sat on one of those giant immovable chucks of wood on Jericho Beach looking north and west. The sea was a soft murmur, the breeze was next to nothing. Small clutches of young people laughed together and cracked fresh cans of beer in the twilight. Somebody had brought a guitar but was merciful enough to leave it alone for the most part. Couples walked arm in arm on the beach, a dog wagged past chomping joyously a chunk of driftwood. That was the night before I went to see Dr Wisconsin and she recommended that I keep this journal as a way to recover the memories that I had lost. Psychogenic amnesia is what she called it. She describes it as selective memory loss and she says that it’s a result of severe stress or trauma. The mind reels and conspires with the body to shut down whole tracts of memory from a specific time. These memories can be recovered, often through an oblique associative approach. My approach seems to be through art and writing. Visual art evokes memories of that time with The Chemical Spray that come to me as tiny visitations of colour, smell, and sound. They’re immediately brand new but settle quickly into scenes that I can remember and begin to categorize. To put into place like a wild mosaic. | image @astroscamp