Preserving every memory!

Well, if you know me close enough, you'll know that I am quite a forgetful person, especially on the very trivial matters. Not that insanely forgetful, tho. What my brain normally does is filtering out important information (important enough that if I miss one of them, I'm gonna be in a big hellish trouble) and just delete all the spam ones in a fraction of second (such as ice cream or extra cooking oil for the next quarantine week).

I don't really have strong memories of my childhood. The very early ones that I can track back so far is when I was around 4 years old, and they were not the pleasant ones. There is a wide missing gap between those time, some fragmented sequences during my school period, and it began clear again around the last year in senior high. The last one just stuck permanently because during that time, I had the best two years trying to win this national scale prestigious scientific competition, and finally won the silver medal (too precious to wipe out!). The missing gap in earlier times was probably because most of my personal items were either had been thrown away, donated (mom frequently gave away our stuffs to this Buddhist organization called Tzu Chi) or even passed down to my brothers and then poof, they were gone forever.

So when I was in the bachelor study and had my first serious relationship (spoiler alert: we broke up), I decided to keep those memories alive, both good and bad, bitter and sweet. I used to believe that all the good sand bad experiences would shape you to be a wiser and better man. Well, at least, you could live out the pain and learn some lessons out of it and also to use the good ones to keep motivating yourself to progress better. We had our first date at Museum Geologi in Bandung. And of course, I kept our tickets, both of them, as my ex thought that they were just "rubbish". Since then, I began collecting mementos: photos, notes, birthday presents, gifts from special occasions, to small things like the wrapping paper of their favorite chocolate (urgh! I know) and movie tickets.

I have never stopped doing that, even when I moved to Leiden, or I can say, it even got crazier! As I began to develop my interest in studying museums, I kept going to various museums every weekend. Since the museum tickets in the Netherlands are quite pretty, well, I decided to collect them. Museums normally have some guide books or exhibition guide, so I also bought some and kept it in an archive box. Not long after that, I had this idea to run a blog that reviews my experiences in the museums and exhibitions, so those booklets became so much helpful. And it turns out to be the right decision. Back then, I had no time to design a blog so I just let the details sit nicely in my head until I got to settle them in the blogposts. During this quarantine, I finally have more than enough time to develop a blog, so I slowly pour out all the memories. By clenching the memento, guide books, or tickets from the museum/exhibition, they gave helping hands to recall all the experiences I had.

Beside the museum tickets, what I also keen on collecting are museum stickers. Well, in the Netherlands, it's actually not the official museum stickers, but instead the stickers that seal the gift you buy from the museum (the Dutch are very thoughtful people that usually buy presents from the museums: books, statues, etc, and then get it wrapped and seal with the sticker). I never realized that this sticker things do exist until January 2019 when I visited a contemporary art museum in Warsaw, Poland. Instead of museum tickets, they gave stickers, a cool marketing strategy actually. In another occasion, when I did research in Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin, the guests were given sticker to be put on the chest, so that you could wander the museum free of charge. The stickers came with different colour for each day. I was there for four days, so technically I got four stickers with different colours (unfortunately I lost the last one in the exhibition room). The other time in Marseille, France, I went to MuCEM, Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean and was given a sticker with specific guest number. At the exit, there was a pole filled with the stickers left coluntarily by the visitors, technically it became a simple but engaging public art (of course I didn't stick mine there)! Since then, I began sticking the stickers at the back of my agenda and it is proven to be useful at many times: to start a conversation, as a stress reliever, etc.

The next item I love to collect is...postcard! Before going crazy with postcards, I used to buy souvenirs when I was away for a holiday, either small statue, crucifix, icons, books, etc. It was then became clear that they took so much space until one time my backpack couldn't fit inside the maximum-baggage-size box at the boarding gate (blame my impulsive book hunting!). One day, I saw a postcard on my friend's desk. It was written by him and sent for him, so I asked, "Did you sent yourself a postcard?" Enough said, he even encouraged me to send myself a postcard from every place I went to, with a reflection note, motivation quotes, or whatever you wanted to say to the back-to-normal-life you. And here I am with a stack of postcards I sent to myself from my trips. Not being selfish, I always sent some postcards to some of my best support system during my hard times in Leiden (Aga, Arliska, Dantie). Postcards are perfect souvenirs, actually. They are light, beautiful, and the best part: you'll never know if it will arrive in your mailbox and when it does, it's quite a surprise from and for yourself!

The other one? Bible! Years back, I had this idea to collect bibles with different languages from every country I had visited. My roommate who studied linguistics once said that if you wanted to train your language skill (well, after you have learned the basic of course), read the bible in that language. As I didn't travel so much, I have collected Polish, German, Dutch, English, Indonesian bibles (too bad I couldn't find a bookshop selling deuterocanonic bible in Hungary and France). How the bibles help me to treasure memories? Well.. It's quite a personal idea. After I bought the bible, I usually went to the a church to light a votive candle, open the bible randomly, read the passage as long as I wanted, absorb every impression I received from reading it as if I could understand, and usually I got my attention at some verses, highlighted them, and checked them in English or Indonesian later. After that, I reflected the journey I just had, deciphering intentions and messages that God wanted to give. In this way, I could easily save every bit of the travel memory. If I got time, I also wrote an intention, hope, resolution or short prayer in the bible, so when I come across it in the future, I could see how far things have changed.

Collecting momentos is one fun thing. The other one is to arrange it, or as I prefer to call it, to curate it. Sometimes, I like to sort the museum tickets based on the impression level I had on the museum: hate, meh, neutral, love, or i-will-sleep-there-for-sure. Other times, I like to curate them based on the art period of the collections: contemporary or modern or medieval, etc. Beside giving a fresh air of memory, rearranging them also provides another perspective to the museums, for example, comparing the style or spirit of the exhibition of two museums housing contemporary arts and reflect on their identity and relevance to the society.

I have friends with interesting hobbies of collecting and preserving memories: one like to collect CDs and write down the memories she had when listening to that album (first love, brokenhearted, farewell, celebrations, etc). The other love collecting crystal balls, fridge magnets, botanical-related stamps, crucifix and rosaries, fossils and even tea bag (yes, no joke)! But, why collecting? Well, for me it is simple. It began with my anxious thought that someday I might became amnesic as I grow older, or perhaps lose the memories from an unprecedented event. I believe that holding a memorabilia will help us to restore the memories back quicker or to recall the forgotten details much easier. It also help us to become creative, to be persistence in our personal mission, and simply, to have something we can treasure and be proud of when we turn grey and frail.