Herbarium

You put autumn leaves fallen from trees, wild flower petals still fragrant with spring and small pieces of plants between the pages of the book you had been reading a long time ago and no longer needed. You create a herbarium. You paste old photos into the scrapbook, sticking little notes written with school ink. You create memories.
What will the herbarium be after many years? When the leaves would dry up, the hidden drops would crumble and release scents? When the colours fade?

What is the memory? The face of a loved one, a long-excluded person who emerged as if from fog, or perhaps from a distance, as if painted over with paint, only through which the contours of the eyes, mouth and hair are visible.
You can smell it, but that face is just a blur.

What is the memory? Is it just a drawer into which you put dry blades of grass, memories and letters, pieces of what is no longer there? The fragile structure of the broken stem contains longing.
Is memory something as necessary for living as water? Without water you die of thirst. Without memory – you die of non-existence.

Antoni Kreis