Thursday, November 20, 2008

suitcase of photographs...

they're gone. i had this old suitcase. it was filled with photos. photos from college, trips cross country, my childhood, holidays, shows, barbeques, hikes, parties, camping, baseball games etc, etc, etc.

they're gone.

(so important to me was this suitcase that it appears in the chorus of the title track on my last CD, Where the Songs Come From.)

i remember many of the moments in these pictures with pictures in my mind. i even have pictures of the pictures in my mind...some of them, anyway.

i mention this only because, not only can i not figure out where the photos have gone but i'm also not sure exactly how i feel about losing them. i thought of these photos as a window or bridge, of sorts, to those memories. a portal back to those times, when i'd crave the occasional visit. 

but i think, maybe, they were more like a tether. snapshots are very one-dimensional. snapshots are often dishonest. much like soundbites. nothing in real life really happens in snapshots.

all of the smiles, the landscapes, the colors, the smells, the imperfections, the perfections, the beauty,  the facts are more real and more accurate in my memory. my full experience of those events still exist in my consciousness. and i prefer knowing that the truth is stored somewhere in my experience to falsely reliving memories by rummaging through a suitcase of  snapshots. so, here's to being released from the tether of the snapshots of my past and to embracing the present moment.

...or maybe i'm just rationalizing the loss :)   -ce



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry about the suitcase... glad the about the tether...but still, it's a loss.

Messy Karen said...

oooh. holding a fav pic in your hands is so satisfying.

raina rose said...

that's a beautiful post Chuck. My 1987 toyota van got stolen when i was 19 with a huge suitcase full of mix tapes i had been making since i was 12...the suitcase itself had pictures of John and Yoko all over it... that and my camera were the only things missing when they found the car. Things are impermanent and elusive but sometimes meaningful nonetheless. good thing we aquarius's have photographic memories :)