i'm the kind of person who collects every single memorabilia out of sentiment. i keep a box of letters and postcards people have written me. my books are riddled with pressed flowers and leaves from random walks in the forest with people i love. i stubbornly cleave to memories and go to great lengths to preserve them in some way; i have kept a handwritten journal for 25 years and running, and i create scrapbook pages of every experience i find worth remembering: a hodgepodge of printed out photos, maps, travel brochures, train tickets, movie and museum passes, and the like. i am not quite sure why i do all that; my best guess is that they keep me sane. because they are so tangible, they help me process the intangibile: love, loss, happiness, misery, longing, life. they are how i deal with the acute awareness of my own mortality, that one day i shall leave this earth, but the thoughts i put down in writing and the photos i take of fleeting moments might keep on existing, and will bear witness to the fact that i too, once was here.