Jounesia

Memory is the graveyard of shipwrecked dreams. Their masts, once proud and erect like fingers reaching out toward heaven, lie split in two, swollen under their own weight. Those ships ranged far, braved storms and ocean deserts, etched by salt and Time, glimpsed lands of strange bloom and color; curiosities for the naturalist-philosopher, who, in his haste, could only sketch their outlines. Their substance now remains in his mind’s eye; sometimes, he revisits it and smells again the thick green of the jungles of Jounesia.

Memory is a seductive enchantress, a siren luring the sailor to her wet, fertile depths; but she feeds on life. What in memory was vain, in life was true. She drinks the living dry, yet in her depths the dead take bloom.

The idea of Youth, carried by those who scarcely recognize it, bleeds out through clouds that veil our sight. The ship’s edge is jagged; the storm recedes. What distant folly drove us then—now, in memory, we flee.