there is no objective reality in memory, only a sort of decaying fiction: especially the ones really far back, old memories do tend to wither and become shriveled, like long-dead leaves, sometimes twisted into entirely different stories. the trees they fall from, who can tell their shapes? if i had any say in the world, i'd stop having memories altogether. rake them all into a neat pile, watch over the flames as i lose my mind. if you stray far enough from the present, memories begin to share properties with prophecies. through the Unfolding, the future collapses into the fabric of reality, and existence disintegrates towards the nothingness it came from, leaving a smoke trail we call memory. however, i feel as though i've been removed, either spared or doomed. as things stand, i've begun to suspect that i am, and have been for a while, in fact, dead. the vague but pulsating loneliness, the inconsequentiality. i must be. i look at the memories as though flipping through the pages of the Book of Sand: i don't understand the language, the stories do not belong to me. they belong to someone else, a former inhabitant of this world. their specters come looking, as if debts have been left unpaid - and all i can do is shrug, and say i'm not the one they're looking for, but they don't always believe it.