I’ve always kept a box with me since I was young, not ONE box, but A box - filled with memorabilia like old tickets, bottle caps, handwritten notes, and photographs. These objects might seem trivial to some, but to me, they represent a memory capsule: a collection of personal artifacts imbued with history and sentiment.
Why?
The items in the box are tied to the moments and people in my life, sometimes with a very specific experience. For example: bottle caps of the craft beers I had with some friends in Romania, tea boxes from a trip to Dinant, or a napkin printed with birds from the second Christmas dinner in 2023, I can name them all.
Imagine they all have a different color shade representing the actants, and each linked with the specific memories drawn in that same color. Perhaps they are all color-less to me if it was the same item outside of the box, but within the box, they are a collection with different colors. Every time I open and go through these items, it feels like I was reliving the memories.
The act of collecting involves a synthetic process of assembling temporal fragments, creating an illusion of continuity that is inherently tied to a sense of loss. This loss, rather than being merely negative, serves a productive function in defining the temporal nature of collections. And when I cannot recall anything about a specific item anymore, the item then will be taken out of the box. The consequence comes after is that there will be space for newer items to be placed in.
Must there be others with the same “fetish” as me? I asked some of my friends about their own experience with this same type of practice, most of them – mainly are female – have at least one.
Another box I still keep in Vietnam.
