There is a story I was telling, which I retold many times yet it has been a while since I've told it last. Now getting back to the story I've noticed some gaps that I did not know how to bridge and I was getting this odd feeling that perhaps this have never happened. I stopped myself at that point and reminded myself that I don't make up such things, that I have no reason to, and that I find enough interest and weirdness in reality not to come up with such a thing. Well, here is the story:

A city, I don't know which. Some part of the city I don't know. I ended up in that part and my glasses frame broke, so I found an optician shop. In my memory it is more like a hardware shop. There was an old man behind a counter, you order, he fetches what you want. The counter I remember was behind a window that can be shut. I am not sure what kind of an optician has a setup like that.. I handed him my glases and asked when it will be ready as I will just be hanging outside till it's ready. He said an hour, so I carefuly made made my way across the road to a park and sat on a bench. I can't see a thing without my glasses, I am not sure how I passed that hour. When it was over I went over to the counter, the old man looked at me and said `Hello there, how can I help you?`, I told him I left him my glasses to fix an hour ago and he went to a back room for awhile. When he came back, he looked at me with that same look and said `Hello there, how can I help you`... So this is the strange story. He gave me my glasses after some exchange that I don't recall, not sure how he did come to remember.

This time round telling the story caused me great embarrassment. As I was telling it I saw it made no sense, and I had to stop. I remembered how my dad told me a few times that often it happens to him. A story that was told many times and is no longer his. Remembering a retelling and not the memory.

A similar category of un-truths I experienced as a child. Stories of others that appealed to me and I willed them mine. My brother was one such hero, the stories of his wars with the greater neighborhood gangs, the stories of a braver, more solid generation that felt much more valid than our own, five years younger, too late, and so unprepared.

The images here are from a notebook I started on June 2025 and finished in July 2026, it was hard going. Airports, hospital, death. Memories of places I haven't visited for 25 years, and even when I did visit I never really stopped.

The method of drawing is a bit hardcore. I start not knowing where it is going. I learned not to mind the embarrassment, not to mind people interpretations, their remarks about my subconscious. I feel that the subconscious is common it is not mine.