Skip to main content

1 hour photo

I used to take a roll of film to the drugstore or camera store to have it developed. I would come back in a few days to pick them up. If I paid extra, I could come back in 1 hour.  I would look at greeting cards and magazines while I waited.

There was a phase for a while when you actually just popped it into an envelope and sent it away. It was the latest thing. 

Now I wait a second, maybe 2 or 3 seconds, and then there I go, I have my photo.  (Having them printed as a photograph is a whole other matter). I sit on the bus and glance across the aisle. A girl sifts idly through photograph after beautiful photograph on Instagram.  I take photographs to pass the time. To get through something boring. I look down at my coffee cup and get twitchy.

Recently, a friend said she only had one photograph from her wedding. I started sweating just thinking about it, but although she wished for a few more, she wasn't too bothered.

What if I didn't take out my phone one day to take a picture?
What if I looked for looking's sake?
What will I see?
What will I remember?

Just for old times sake I'll let the photographs develop a little longer that day.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Small Craft

I accompanied my mother-in-law to an appointment this week. On the paper, preparing her for the appointment, it invited her bring along something to read or a small craft. As soon as I heard about this invitation to bring a small craft into an otherwise austere waiting area, my mind started to do bouncing somersaults in many different directions. Googly eyes? Glue gun? Feathers? Play clay? Friendship braclets?
4 comments
Read more

The words coming out of my mouth

  These days I wear a mask. I don't wear a mask all of the time, only when I am indoors or unavoidably up close with people who I don't usually interact with.  I wear one when I am ordering things, or buying things or attempting to enjoy some form of public entertainment.  I cannot rely on reading others lips. My lips are hidden. We ask each other to repeat.  We move our eyes or our whole heads to try and enunciate more clearly.  I say fewer words, more carefully chosen words behind the mask. Sometimes that is helpful, sometimes that just causes more confusion. I walked into the woods. I did not need a mask.  I only saw a few other people and they were distanced. Masks were unnecessary. After so much talking and not talking and avoiding talking out loud I am forced to examine when I speak and when I choose not to. This is not a bad thing since I can be an insufferable chatter box, just a new thing for my brain to adjust itself to. When I am not standing aro...
2 comments
Read more

Bringing her back

 As the first anniversary finally passed, I exhaled.  The sadness still nibbled away at the edges, but not clawing deep into my chest like it had been with varying degrees of ferocity in the twelve months previously.  She died in early summer, so I plunged into ocean and lakes and ate fruit straight from the plant.  The grief became softer, the folk songs carried me along in the potato patch we planted in therapy. But then, I started to miss her.  The deep grief kept her so close and now as the pressure eased, so did her presence.  I held my breath and decided to be really sad this morning just to see her face.  To sit in her prescence.  My breath became jagged as I cried for her, for us.   This Taylor Swift cover  by Marc Maron broke me right open this morning.  Here's to staying broken open enough to keep your loved ones close. And then, I walked into her garden. The garden she envisionied, planted over and over and still pre...
Post a Comment
Read more