Memory is a dangerous place for me. Its like a drop of mercury, the most mysterious and hard core of all the metals. I was fascinated by mercury when I was in high school chemistry class. I have always imagined that it’s actually some sort of quasi-intelligence, something alien and unascertainable to humans, some act of cosmic mischief. Memory is a perfectly indivisible drop of odourless poison with a little knife edged shine of light at its topmost curvature. I can see a drop of mercury on the smooth white surface before me. The surface is the emptiness of time passed, a void of subtle and fragrant violence. Smell is the sense most clearly linked to memory. The scent of cinnamon cupcakes through the open window of a bakery can send me back to the dim warmth of my grandmothers house. The mercury seems to pulse with knowing, to radiate an awareness of me. A sentient thing, memory, like having a second brain that I can only access through a gentle dance of coercion, a summoning, an incantation that may bring me an exquisite approximation of a real, almost tangible, thing that disintegrates at my touch. Like the mercury I can see it and I am aware that it can sense me, that it knows me, that it escapes me. I cannot capture it. It is my barest perception disappearing and taking my language with it. A vapour of itself. A diaphanous history that can only be recalled as skeins of smoke. A room of endless curtains. | image @objects_of_common_interest