Tak Cukup Memori

My uncle said,
"Today is a historical day",
He meant it cynically,
Dissing the fact that we were all getting together for a photo,
Frantically & giddily,
Commemorating a pretty mundane occasion,
Just excuses to have food,
To meet friends,
That sort of persuasion,
No one's birthday,
No one's wedding celebration.

And in my mind,
Were the sounds of rapid flipping pages,
In books from when I remembered albums,
With pictures on them,
Throughout the ages,
(Well not really ages,
My life doesn't span across that many stages,
But those blurry polaroid of my grandpa as a teacher,
Were I guess moments worthy of a picture).

At least, next to a selfie, with a fancy flower as a filter,
My grandpa could say "Masa tu atuk baru jadi cikgu. 1942"
Right?

Well, I beg to differ.

I read somewhere that memories are not real,
In the sense that they are not documents in your head,
You can reclaim from a bureau,
They are acts of passion with creation,
And that every time you think back to that day your first crush,
Held your hand,
It is laced with emotion,
So that when you're in love you remember the soft creases,
Of his palm in between your fingers
But when you're angry,
You start to realize how awkward he was in pulling your wrist,
As if every time there was danger.

Because he couldn't trust you,
And now you can't trust your mind,
At least, I can't trust mine,
So I feel these films if kept safe,
Means nothing gets left behind,
Physical or digital in kind,
And whose to decide what's the value of your stories?
From your self-absorbed OOTDs,
To chilling scenes of the first WMDs,
They could be pulp, the shortest tales without any plot,
Or they could be sagas, that should not be forgot.

All of these images,
Are possibly the only thing that are not mere visages,
They're proof of our continuous strand of humanity,
Every expression captured in eternity,
From the bile of genocide
To that time you smiled one Saturday night,
They're all our legacies,
Etched out from souls with only fleeting memories.

Maybe that's why Alzheimer is scary,
Cause what are we but the things we remembered?
Nothing presumably, with our past dismembered,
But if we have these photographs,
Maybe they can play out our individuality,
In our children's fancier phonographs,
Or whatever we can afford,
We should keep uploading it all to be stored,
and MAYBE TO FEED OUR GOOGLE OVERLORD,
STORING IDENTITY AND RESPECTING PRIVACY,
I SEE YOU LIKE BACK TO THE FUTURE 3,
HERE'S AN AD ON HOVERBOARDS.

*installs Snapchat*
"No more of that"
*Snapchat introduces Memories*
"Damn auto-update capabilities"

But I digress,

Kalau lain kali aku rasa stress,
Sebab pak cik aku sinis,
Gelakkan generasi yang berphotoshoot,
Macam sekor-sekor perasan artis,
I will just tell him, YES,
"Hari ni memang hari bersejarah,
Kalau pak cik nak saya whatsapp gambar,
Boleh saje, takde masalah"