good atlas

A path is formed by walking. Sustained by a slow and continuous here, annotated by thought, diversion, and surprise. Mapping into place, a memory palace. 

Zadie Smith says. Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

No memory survives outside of place. Most of our memory is not stored in photos but in certain lights of day, smells, colour, in certain dishes, or a collective make up of mise-en-scenes that coalesce into a wordless memory. 

Once during the pandemic, I was walking alone in SS18, Subang Jaya. The day was closing in with its last light still peeking through the horizon. The sky was a moody blue interlaced with pearl yellow. I pass a particular intersection. Two main roads sutured by a monsoon drain. 

Then unannounced, a memory. The kind that rushes to you all at once in your body. Skin, smell and all. I was riding a pastel pink Metro bus with my grand uncle. He was in his fifties then. We were on our way home from Kuala Lumpur— Pudu and thereabouts—, taking bus number 10 to go home. We were sitting right at the back of the bus where my much younger self was looking out the windows towards the monsoon drain. It almost hurt feeling those memories well up in me again. Like my body had broken open, letting the soft light in.

This one memory can only be situated in the now and never again. Here and now, the universe speaks through you. 

The trees, the wind, the soft light, the humming traffic and singing birds, different in make each day, all participate in and partake in this particular mind of the place. Then there is no you or us or them and me. All is a singular entity moving to the rhythms of the breathing world. Thinking the same thing, speaking the same thing in ways that we could.