The recounting of memories is a process of difference within repetition, the view expands and recedes like a tide as one move towards the object of reflection, other images, sensations act upon the memory leading the storyteller elsewhere, each movement of memory surfaces some other detail. The telling is very much dependant on the time within which it is being told, the present moment and all the sensations of that moment, no one account is exactly the same as another although the focus remains constant. Looking back on a life through a tunnel of existence, it is a strange truth that often those events farthest from the present seem the most defined ‘I remember it as if it were yesterday’. The listener interprets through their own memories and experiences, the connected listener, daughter, granddaughter, sibling, or bystander with similar beliefs, reinterprets part of the narrative as their own, connects it to the system of beliefs already beholden to them and makes it part of their identity. To identify oneself with a certain though or feeling and to take on the story of another as ones own is to feel a sense of belonging and to position yourself within the alien otherness of the world.

The certain space I know as home is a space I return to constantly in my mind while away and yet find myself constantly trying to find the edge of while within. It is a ‘look out’ a static, solid harbour with a view of the horizon from which I can safely master the world and hope to build a place of my own. I am caught there, rooted to daily function and routine, people and roles.
When in alien territories, foreign spaces I am seemingly free, unconnected, dislocated, looking about me with awe and amazement, un owned, outside, watching from the train window. But I find myself searching, walking the streets of cities free from any routine or reference I look for them still, I look to recreate a certain sense of self, of belonging, universal references to what constitutes home, signs of habitation; kept gardens, shelves of books, spaces defined by an existence comfort me.
The transient existence within the city, the rented apartment, shared house lack stillness. I find it momentarily in small gestures or activities that I try and repeat. Lacking place leaves us shaken, wandering, picking things up and discarding them, looking towards an ever-expanding horizon. The trace we leave is a whisper within the clamour of voices; it exists scratched into brick walls, on road signs, amongst the dust accumulating on a box of unpacked books or the rubbish spilling from upturned bins, it talks of encounters, miscommunication, feelings discarded or secreted away under furniture and between buildings.