Monday, 12 January 2009

• Captured

  Phone.  Left hand pocket.  Wallet.  In the bag.  Keys.  In my hand.  Book.  In the bag.  Camera?  Also, in the bag.

  Essentials.  It’s all about the essentials.  Phone, my connection to the world.  Wallet, even though there’s hardly ever any money in there, it’s still has my I.D. should someone have any doubt about my identity…oh and my bus card is in there.  Keys, definitely don’t want to be locked outside my house…again.  Book, I’ve carried a book with me everywhere since I was a kid, old habits are hard to break.  Camera?  That’s a more recent habit.

  Lately it’s been a series of cheap disposable cameras I buy in packs at walgreens or target.  I’m a fan of Kodak and Polaroid, I tend to go for whatever’s cheapest.  Although I really like Kodak fun savers the best.  I used to have an awesome digital camera, the kind that actually made people go, “ooh.”  But as is my tendency I lost it while on vacation this past January when I got off the night bus—and it didn’t.  Sadly it was the second camera I had lost in a year.  The first was a clunky digital camera.  2.0 megapixels, no zoom, a ridiculous flash, but it was still a Kodak.  I loved it in spite of itself.

  I don’t know when I became obsessed with taking photographs, it was as if one day I woke up with this need to document my life and the lives of the people around me.  Not just taking snapshots of drunken escapades and uncomfortable posed pictures, but something more than that.  I wanted to capture moments.  Little pieces of time on 35 mm film.

  I tend to forget things.  I tend to lose things.  I tend to forget my cell phone at home if I don’t remember to check for it on my way out.  I’ll be halfway to school or work and it’ll still be in the same spot I left it the night before.  Charging by my closet door.  I’ll remember that I left it there and I get mad at myself for forgetting.  But that’s just me.  I forget.  I forget umbrellas on a rainy day, I forget what I went to the store for, I forget where I left my lip gloss, I forget to pack a lunch.  I forget, I forget, I forget.

  So I guess I don’t want to forget.  I don’t want to forget the things I did and the things I saw.  I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t remember the silliness of her youth.  The places I went and the people I met.  I notice though, that those are the things that I rarely forget.  The big things, the important things, the special things.  I don’t forget.  I just want to make sure that it never happens.  That the possibility to forget isn’t there.  The possibility to not remember an experience.

  So I take pictures.

  Even of the drunken escapades and the uncomfortable poses.

  They’re still moments in time.  Moments that I treasure.

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