I'm younger than that now

Occasionally I need to secure my position as the reigning Queen of Bad Analogies That Completely Miss the Mark, even though there's a slim shot in hell of being deposed. But there is tradition to think about. And the part where I like to hear myself type.

Before the last move I sifted through all my photographs. I was blown away by how many totally useless photos I've been schlepping around my entire life. Like two rolls of strangers at party I attended in 1998, who I had never seen before or since, that kind. And piles of interchangeable inanimate holiday objects; there's the dinner table, again. There's the turkey, again. There's the tree, again. Hey look, a snowdrift outside the front window. Nothing to distinguish one year from the next, meaningless alone or en masse. Or those photos you take of something that was totally moving and breathtaking in person--an emerald green, dewy pasture at sunrise--but when you get the pictures back it's like, whoopee. Thirty six poorly composed long shots of a moist cow. Move over Ansel Adams.

Beyond quality, I had quantity issues as well. I wondered, do I NEED fifty seven pictures of my first 'real' boyfriend? Yes I want to remember him. Yes I would like to see his shining face when I'm old, and remember that I was once not old, the opposite in fact, and I had a wicked cute boyfriend who used to skateboard in the hall outside of my last period class while waiting for the bell to sound my release. But do I need fifty seven pictures to remember that? Because it's not like I have a picture of him skating in the hall, yet I remember it so well I can hear the whoosh of his Creagers on the waxed floor, I can smell his leather jacket and his favorite chewing gum on his breath (Bazooka) without a single picture for reference. Furthermore, do I need a hundred other pictures of estranged past acquaintances I haven't talked to in twenty years, who I will never see again, and with whom an encounter would be, politely and/or at best, a brief and profoundly awkward experience?

It occurred to me amateur photographers should act more like professional ones. Not every shot is a keeper. Quite the contrary. Professional photographers take rolls and rolls and rolls of film to get that one good shot in which the essence of the subject is distilled. They never print the rest.

So I went through them all, one by one, and kept the photos that were representative of something, or someone, or were just plain arty. I bought a few of those silly little paperback sized photo albums and designated one for pets past and present (one or two pictures of each), one for friends and boyfriends past and present (one or two pictures of each), and even kept a few choice pictures from the wedding day of my defunct first marriage. I have a larger one for family where I did the same style of purge; only keeping those photos which captured a unique moment, ditching the umpteenth picture of the poor dead turkey, no matter how brown and crispy the skin turned out that year.

While I was tossing the rest of the pictures into the trash I was terrified I would regret it. I mean, they're irreplaceable, you know? I can't go back to that moment. There are no do over's. Worse, I was terrified I was doing irreparable damage to the eternal souls of the subjects. One night I imagined the 20 year old face of this guy staring out into a yellowy purgatorial trash bag of torment, inside a larger bag, inside a crushed down block of refuse, buried a scant twelve feet underneath that Target on the Belt Parkway. I couldn't stop worrying I'd caused a world of f'd up damage to a living person. And I do not want for damage of man friends! All I wanted was a little damn feng in my shui, capiche?

But when I was done and my boxes of photos became three, tiny little albums, it felt like...I had MORE pictures somehow. There was peace to be found in the space I'd created. I even look at them occasionally, something I had only done about once a decade before. The ones that were left meant something. Purging my photos ended up being the best idea I'd had in a long time.

The same is not true for pregnancy-hormone induced purges, I've discovered.

I'm just going to leave it at that.

Posted by Antigeist at September 19, 2006 01:52 PM