All things are going old, dying, passing into nothingness. Memories keep them young, fresh. Memories keep our idols on their pedestals, our heroes at their peek, our loved ones healthy and young and innocent and pure. Our memories halt this progression of time, ignore the failings and fallings of these things, these people, as they age like everything must, as they grow weak and tired.
All things are aging and decaying. All things are remembered at some point of that decay, whether by photograph or recollection. Every day we halt another object somewhere along the path it is taking to nothingness. Every day we add to the archive of memories, moments of an object’s lifespan, a slice of what it was or will be only to remember as it currently is.
The above is some sort of attempt at writing for The Ampersand Project. I’m not trying to be deep or a poet or anything like that. I am simply stating something of what ‘Arrested State of Decay’ is. So there.
4/2/2021 Update: The Ampersand Project is no more. I found a 2008 post from the host, Joanne Merriam, with a little bit of info:
Just as an aside, the Ampersand Project (and the online journal) that Peg mentions don’t exist anymore (the server they were on, and my laptop, had contemporaneous hissyfits, and rather than a painful reconstruction I just took them down), which means that a sustainable living learning center in New Mexico could take over the name (without, I’m sure, ever having heard of our use of it).