June 13, 2004
These memories are like a thorn in my back. So sharp and so crisp.. and I ask my self, why do I need anything else to remind me of what is already so clear.... During vacation you can not help but to take that camera out and start snapping away like some giddy 50 year old tourist away on their very first vacation. These shots just happen and then they end up at the developers. And you wait and wait.. for those pictures that you so want to have and see... cause all you have now is that memory to smile about.... but as anticlimactic as a ruined ending of a movie, the pictures just don't seem as good, or clear, or as emotional as you remembered. No quite the same as when you close your eyes and seen the full panoramic view in your head.
After we got the pictures back, I feel at a loss. 22 roles yet it seems like there could have been so much more... and there was. I hate to rely on these picture to tell the account of the vacation... because you can try as hard as possible to look for a story in these pictures about a time and place, but really it cant. You start to remember the vacation from those picture and get lazy, and stop pulling from memory what more that a picture.
I always find that when I sit around and just talk, there is so much more of a memory stimulation than any picture can fulfill. The words just paint the better picture.
What of the 22 roles.... memory don't last forever, and whatever simplified version of the experience is there, it does leave an experience... and it does tell part of the story, if not just a portion. So share with the world the pics, but my eyes will still close at night to remember... an I'll be there again, not just looking through the view finder...