A slide view into the past.

The other day my dad brought this little rig along.

It is called a "Paterson Design 101" slide viewer.

I must have seen it before in one of my many forays into their basement, but it kind of took me off guard. It is so simple to use and yet it has a secret world inside, just waiting for me to pick it up.

Along with the slide viewer, he brought along 20 slides of pictures from my time in Hungary almost 20 years ago.

For the next hour, I spent time with the Paterson Design 101, peering into the back lit past. Pictures of new (then) friends who I haven't really seen since, houses, markets, the control room of a power station, and the grandparents of people I met.

I retreated into a world where somehow I ended up in a parade in a town I cannot remember the name of...

...that had a culture house that kept homesickness at bay. It illuminated a time in my life, a coming into my adult self.

The slide viewer helped me to experience those images in a whole different way than if I had seen them on Facebook or came across the printed versions (although I like both of those formats too). It was like I was being ushered into a quiet, vivid (almost animated), and personal viewing of my own memories.

As if my own stored memories had been extracted and had a light shone through them. Reminding me not just of the colour of the grass, but of the smell of the soap and the heat of the sun.

I haven't put pictures onto slides since June 30, 1995. Maybe I should continue to. After all, when I am old and gone and my kids want to peer into the past, they'll have plenty of access to the images, but what will those photo viewing experiences be like? Mysterious? Special? A little bit thrilling? This is especially hard for me to predict, since I couldn't see the iphone or even the internet coming. However, I hope some technology, vintage or not, exists that pitches a tent in their minds and draws a curtain for them to have as unique a vantage point on the images as the memories that they distill.

Comments

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

the words fell out

Despite being an introvert, I do often process big life events (and many many small ones) out loud by verbally hashing out my thoughts with whoever will put up with me. But this morning when I woke up to the big red blotch on the U.S. map...all my /the words fell out. They fell out unsaid, unformed. Got to work and probably , in another time, would have annoyed my co-workers, dominating the conversation with my verbal extrusions, but not today. I just mutely stared across at them and nodded. My dad came for lunch. Normally, we relish a good political diatribe, especially when we feel sure of our perspective, but this time, all I could do was munch on fries and marvel at all the unarticulated thoughts that I was not even bothering to retrieve. The silence inside me was noticeable. Social media was awash with reactions and I just looked away. I couldn't bear to read one word about it. I was not receptive to any reactions, accusations, reflections, words...

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

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