Vapor Apothecary · Collection I
The Mercy of Forgetting
VA · COLLECTION I · KEEPER’S LETTER
Collection Open
Curiously Kept
Keeper’s Letter
Vapor Apothecary follows humanity’s unfinished search for relief. Here, that search enters the strange mercy of anesthesia.
To the one who has entered,
There are forms of mercy that leave no memory behind.
Under anesthesia, a patient relinquishes consciousness, control, and any account of what happens next. For a time, the keeping of that life passes into other hands. Someone else must remain present, attend to the breath, mark the passage of time, and remember what the patient has been permitted to forget.
This collection gathers two unlikely objects: a flower named for remembrance and an instrument made to carry a person beyond it.
Placed together, they ask us to consider forgetting not as carelessness or loss, but as something that may, under careful preparation and attentive care, be given as an act of mercy.
The collection does not ask you to celebrate every attempt humanity has made to escape suffering. Some remedies failed. Some caused harm. Some forms of pain could not be relieved at all.
It asks instead what care requires when another person must temporarily surrender awareness and control.
Not everything forgotten is unimportant. Some things disappear because they were carried for us. And sometimes, forgetting is its own form of mercy.
The preparation is ready.
Open it carefully.
Keep the Light
Vapor Apothecary · Collection I · VA-C01-P-0001
The Preparation Is Ready
The letter has been received. What was prepared may now be opened.
The Preparation
VA-C01-P-0001 · Record of Entrusted Care
The Mercy of Forgetting
Not all that is forgotten is lost.
The Keeper’s Observation
The forget-me-not asks to be remembered; the ether apparatus offers the mercy of forgetting. Between them, preparation makes mercy possible.
Botanical Motif
Woodland Forget-me-not
Myosotis sylvatica
The request to remember.
Interpretive Reconstruction
John Snow’s Ether Apparatus
After Snow’s 1847 design
The possibility of forgetting.
Vapor Apothecary · Collection I
VA-C01-O-0001 · Apothecary Observation
What Disappears From One Keeping
What leaves the patient’s keeping may remain under the careful keeping of another.
Botanical Motif
Woodland Forget-me-not
Myosotis sylvatica
The request to remember.
Interpretive Reconstruction
John Snow’s Ether Apparatus
After Snow’s 1847 design
The possibility of forgetting.
The Observation
It is commonly believed that forgetting leaves an absence.
This is not entirely accurate.
An experience may disappear from the patient’s keeping while remaining intact in the hands of another: observed, measured, guarded, and carried safely to its conclusion.
The patient need not retain the experience in order for the experience to have been carefully witnessed. What disappears from one keeping may remain in another as observation, record, responsibility, and care.
Whether this constitutes forgetting, or simply one form of entrusted care, remains under consideration.
Under Continued Observation
Literary Companion
Forget Me Not
Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
Forget me not.
Ann Plato · 1841
Read the Complete Poem
Archival Literary Companion
Forget Me Not
Ann Plato · 1841
When in the morning’s misty hour,
When the sun beams gently o’er each flower;
When thou dost cease to smile benign,
And think each heart responds with thine,
When seeking rest among divine,
Forget me not.
When the last rays of twilight fall,
And thou art pacing yonder hall;
When mists are gathering on the hill,
Nor sound is heard save mountain rill,
When all around bids peace be still,
Forget me not.
When the first star with brilliance bright,
Gleams lonely o’er the arch of night;
When the bright moon dispels the gloom,
And various are the stars that bloom,
And brighten as the sun at noon,
Forget me not.
When solemn sighs the hollow wind,
And deepen’d thought enraps the mind;
If e’er thou doest in mournful tone,
E’er sigh because thou feel alone,
Or wrapt in melancholy prone,
Forget me not.
When bird does wait thy absence long,
Nor tend unto its morning song;
While thou art searching stoic page,
Or listening to an ancient sage,
Whose spirit curbs a mournful rage,
Forget me not.
Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
Forget me not.
When brightness round thee long shall bloom,
And knelt remembering those in gloom;
And when in deep oblivion’s shade,
This breathless, mouldering form is laid,
And thy terrestrial body staid,
Forget me not.
Should sorrow cloud thy coming years,
And bathe thy happiness in tears,
Remember, though we’re doom’d to part,
There lives one fond and faithful heart,
That will forget thee not.
The Practice
VA-C01-P-0001 · Practice of Entrusted Care
The patient is permitted to forget
because another has agreed to remember.
Anesthesia creates an interval the patient cannot witness. Within that interval, care becomes a form of memory.
Breath is observed. Time is marked. Change is noticed. What cannot be consciously carried by the patient is held by another until the patient is able to resume their own keeping.
Prepare
Make ready the conditions in which another person may safely relinquish awareness and control.
Observe
Notice breath, time, response, and change while another person cannot witness them for themselves.
Adjust
Respond as conditions change rather than assuming preparation alone will be enough.
Return
Carry responsibility through the unwitnessed interval until awareness returns and the patient can resume their own keeping.
The Collection Cabinet
Objects Kept From the Preparation
The preparation leaves behind a small body of evidence: records, observations, and objects made to preserve what was considered here and carry it beyond the Apothecary.
Archival Print
Observation Print
The central pairing, literary companion, Keeper’s observation,
and archival note preserved as a collection print.
Examine Object
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Archival Print
Observation Print
The central pairing, literary companion, Keeper’s observation, and archival note preserved as a collection print.
Preparation Record
Preparation Card
A portable record of the apparatus, botanical motif,
historical context, and Keeper’s observation.
Examine Object
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Preparation Record
Preparation Card
A portable record of the apparatus, botanical motif, historical context, and Keeper’s observation.
Observation Record
Apothecary Observation
A record concerning forgetting, entrusted memory,
and what remains in another’s keeping.
Examine Object
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Observation Record
Apothecary Observation
A record concerning forgetting, entrusted memory, and what remains in another’s keeping.
Literary Companion
Forget Me Not
Ann Plato’s 1841 poem preserved beside a collection
concerned with remembrance, forgetting, and entrusted care.
Examine Object
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Literary Companion
Forget Me Not
Ann Plato’s 1841 poem preserved beside a collection concerned with remembrance, forgetting, and entrusted care.
These are the objects kept from the preparation.
Vapor Apothecary · Collection IThe Closing Light
Vapor Apothecary · Collection I
Not Everything Forgotten Is Lost.
The patient may not remember the hands that watched over them, the adjustments made in silence, or the vigilance that carried them safely through.
The care remains.
The Keeper’s VowI will remember while you cannot.
What was entrusted has been carried. The patient may return to their own keeping.
Keep the Light
The Mercy of Forgetting · Collection I · Preparation Closed