I’m a bit out of practice with this. Please pardon my dust.
Two weeks ago, my first academic year of graduate school ended when I submitted the last of three final papers. After working continuously for nearly 10 days writing, editing and rewriting, thinking the entire time of everything else I would have rather been doing, it was a bit of surprise when I caught myself quite literally sitting and staring at the wall for half an hour, wondering what I should do now that I had, well… nothing to do.
In much the same way I find myself in a similar place with regards to this webpage—I’m not sure what I want now that I have both the time and inclination to do something with it, now that I really ought to give a thought to making something presentable and meaningful, rather than the usual cast-off ramblings and vague dribbles about who-knows-what. And in many ways, this page is long outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any, but—
Last summer, I put my camera down and stepped away from the keyboard for what proved to an extremely eventful three months. After Monste(rrat)’s wedding I had noticed how much I’d taken to living life on video replay: events and places and people assiduously recorded and noted and documented, and only afterward, through reflection, considered and felt. I had become more interested in capturing a good snapshot than enjoying the moment in which it occurred, more concerned with remembering and relaying a humorous anecdote than participating in the conversation as it happened.
For the rest of the summer I committed to living my life in front of the lens, rather than behind it, as an active participant in the story rather than an observer. It was, all things considered, quite possibly the best three months ever—languid, carefree and filled with the kind of openness that impending departures engenders among friends—and while my memories of that time are vivid and colorful I have nearly nothing to show for it, just a handful of photos and random memorabilia picked up here and there. Nothing that accurately describes how meaningful that time was, especially when compared to the piles and piles of pictures, notes and stories I’ve collected from other, far less interesting periods in my life. My packrat tendencies bristle at this glaring gap in my scrap record.
Two weeks ago, summer began again. This time, I hope to save some of it.
4 Comments
Isn’t there a John Mayer song about this?
I do the same thing. You remember those binary creatures of Star Trek TNG who had little buffer units on their belts for conversation?
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/aliens/article/70565.html
It’s like that: camera as tool for temporally-extended presence.
Now that you have the time and inclination to improve upon your website, I recommend that you turn it into a 24-hour emporium for wombat-on-wombat pornography.
There’s certainly a place for balance. Getting stuck behind the lens isn’t a problem I have, so it’s hard to empathize with that particular scenario. Still, I imagine that in the same way I either post, or do things that I wish I was posting about, but rarely both at the same time, there’s a way to strike a balance between the two. Good luck finding it.
Oh, and bring on the wombats.
I recently had 3 months in Turkey — something I’ve wanted to do for years and saved for and fantasised about… and came back with over 8000 photographs. Now I sometimes wonder whether I would have experienced it all more immediately and vividly if I hadn’t spent so much of my time looking for the right angle and trying to persuade my digicam to take pics at the edges of its capacity. On the other hand, I have a slideshow screensaver of a couple hundred pics from the trip which has done a wonderful job of reminding me of the details, providing things to muse over, and spurring me to try and get it together to get back there… and like someone said — Aristotle? — the unexamined life isn’t worth living…