Letting go of all those photographs…
I’ve spent the last couple of days sorting through my life in photographs, from birth to the present moment, preparing to let go of yet another big box of artifacts. An online photo processing center called Snapfish is offering 30% off what they call “memory books.” That spurred me into a new phase of my continuing effort to lighten the weight of what I haul through life with me.
I’ve taken digital photographs of the best of my old photographs (using the macro feature, trying to avoid glare and reflections, which is no small task), then compiled the photos digitally and arranged them into pages of a variety of formats which Snapfish will print in a “linen”-covered book. Lighter still is my Flickr account, where the pictures can stay for as long as Flickr lets them. I made the most recent set of photographs private, to protect my daughters’ privacy mostly, but the rest are all public, and I put all my “favorites” together in a set called (who would have thought of this?) “Favorites,” making juxtapositions that made sense to me and sometimes made me gasp. The stories behind those juxtapositions are all the books I haven’t written–fiction, of course. All my stories are fiction. If the people who appear in the pictures with me could speak and tell the story they remember, it would be completely different from mine.
Loading pictures up to Flickr is easy. Leaving them there and disposing of all the originals requires a certain amount of trust. Could Flickr crash and lose them all? Will Flickr suddenly start charging people to store their photographs? I wonder. That’s why I went for the Snapfish book as a backup.
Creating the book with Snapfish took endless hours, even with DSL (I don’t know if this is a universal difficulty or if my new DSL modem is malfunctioning), because every time I added or subtracted a photograph, added a caption, or deleted something, the computer stopped, whirred, made grinding noises and grunts, and often froze up entirely, making it necessary to restart, do a few yoga stretches or make a cup of tea, and go through it all again and again. But after about 32 hours of effort, I have it. In a week or so, when I get the book, it will be possible for me to whip through the last 62 years in 26 glossy pages and to throw an entire bin full of photographs into the nearby dumpster. This whole process has been rather like a ten-day meditation course. My children’s childhoods are there, of course; all the old romances that crashed and burned; some friends who still send me emails are there, along with many who have died or disappeared; my acting and writing careers are there; my career as a college professor. All the joy and attempt, all the love, all the sound and fury: signifying something. One small life. Mine. The only one I can ever really know.
Someone asked me recently–who was it? a former student, I think. Someone asked me why I open up and put my whole life on the blog. Why? Because it’s all I know. And even then I’m sure there are self-deceptions, illusions, egomaniacal exaggerations. What else can I know? Literature? I know nothing. What I think I know is probably wrong. I thought I knew my children’s bodies when they were small. I loved their little toes like peas in a row, their small arms and shoulders and bellies and buttocks that fit my large hand or curled into my long arms. I washed them and powdered and dressed them, put ointment on their cuts, kissed their scars, and I thought I knew them. But they kept changing. Now they’re adults, and I have literally lost touch with them. Each one has his or her own thing to do. They go from me, into their own lifesprings, as they should. I don’t know them. At times I thought I knew a lover, but that was always illusory. I am left with this one body, this one mind, this one distorting lens through which I see whatever it is that I see. This one life is my only treasure. What else have I to offer? Nothing. Everything else is pieces of paper crumbling and falling to dust, or it’s pretense or pretentiousness, or it’s noise. So I offer up whatever this body can make of what it encounters. Sensation, memory, yet another leap into the unknown. Maybe what is true for me is true for someone else. Or not. Today I’m dazed by all these photographs, all this memory.
And at the same time, another friend-through-the-blog has written to say she is near Portland and will have a look at these apartment complexes I’m applying to. How wonderful. A kind of energy of welcome seems to emanate from there, like the smell of cookies baking. I follow that nose into a future where I will make something new. New friends, new projects, new mistakes. I will be doing this till it’s over, and I carry with me every day I’ve lived. It rolls along into the future with me through this moment. This one. Now.
Outside in the “real” world there is rain and thunder. Everything is being washed clean like the memory of a very old woman.
Tags: Photographs, Preparation
Kendall
Kendall – I love your photographs! Looking at them gave me a small glimpse into a few more of the many wonderful and rich facets of your character. You continually surprise me – I like that!
Kendall – Having also been a person who collects and takes a lot of photographs, I can empathize with the emotions that you mention well-up within you as you sort through them . . .
Myself, I find that I am only very occasionally in the proper mind-set for such an undertaking. ( Like, prior to a ‘move’ … )
” All the joy and attempt, all the love, all the sound and fury . . . ” — SO well – put …
I have enjoyed your [blog]online-diary SO very much — intermittently, albeit — that I just wanted to say it again here. Your honesty and courage and passion are an inspiration and a ‘roadmap’, of sorts, for all who follow . . .
In what sense?
Well, in this sense:
. . . out here in Space you’ve got this ‘Other’ Human, experiencing the whole range of confusing settings and contradictions that we all find ourselves in; and this person finds great comfort and courage and resilience knowing that ‘Another’ has faced these same issues and challenges (by reading your Journal) and developed a set of personal guidelines with which to ‘navigate’ . . .
Portland will be a more-complete city with you as one of its residents; I think that it is a wonderful ‘fit’ . . .
Best Regards,
Steve Raymond
Constance and Steve, you do encourage me. Not sure that’s a good idea. Given a little encouragement, I am apt to continue…and continue…and continue. Thank you both. Yes, I AM hoping that there is comfort and courage and resilience in encountering another being who is navigating (or bumbling, or whatever it is) through this wonder-land. And there’s another voice heard for Portland! It feels increasingly that Portland is my next home.
A warm bow of thanks to you both,
K
very nice fifth paragraph Kendall