We do tend to take pictures at times of joy, fun, triumph, exuberance. Because of this, as I look at other people’s pictures, it seems to me that their lives are all fun and excitement; adventure and opportunity. I don’t tend to carry a camera with me and so my pictures are all of me at my house, asleep on the couch with my sons or playing video games or of me at a birthday party… in my house. As a matter of fact as I look at other people’s pictures it would seems that, in comparison with my camera, their cameras have a much higher quality of life. If I were my camera I’d be pissed at me. I’d probably go find some adventurer to take me across the face of the earth and for goodness sake take a picture or two. I actually lived in Italy for a month and didn’t take a single photograph. I’ve hiked nearly every state trail in Arkansas and I have not one picture. I have driven my VW Beetle from here to Florida 14 hours and back but do not have a snap shot. I once camped out of the back of my car for a week in the summer and saw a huge chunk of northern Oklahoma but never even considered capturing the memories. I have been skiing in Breckenridge Colorado, fishing in Manitoba Canada, sight-seeing in Roswell New Mexico, rocking at a music festival in upstate New York, and body surfing in Destin Florida without one single Kodak moment. Once a friend of mine knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to go to New Orleans right now, so of course I threw a pair of pants and a t-shirt into a backpack with my toothbrush and walked out the door. I called into work from the road and left a message for my roommate on the answering machine so that no one would think I had died. What I failed to bring was a camera. That week we went to New Orleans then over to the gulf in Texas, visited a DuPont physical processing plant then drove up to Six Flags and then came home. I saw amazing, beautiful, valuable people, places, and things. I have nary a picture of these nouns.
These days I have a camera on my phone… but who can spare the memory?
2 comments:
That's why you have Carl Dog and I :) and words for telling stories.
Paint those word pictures Baby Bro. I know you can do it, and there are no better memories than the ones of you on the couch with your boys.
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