07/2019

A million years ago, in high school, I got a Canon EOS Rebel G. In city college, I took a photography class and learned to roll my film (carefully!) in the dark on a film reel, and watched my images bloom in chemical baths. But I after that I never honed in on this craft, and taking pictures became more a means to capture memories. It wasn't so much about composition although I would try of course, but more what was in the picture that counted. Things I didn't want to forget, ever. People, places, things, feelings. My most valuable possessions are my hard drives full of now digital photos, my scrapbooks full of 35 mm photos, and albums of generations-old black and whites.

I regret that almost all the pictures uploaded here were taken with point and shoot digital cameras or camera phones, and that the quality is not half of what they could and should have been, but they will live here because they capture memories. I made comments on many of them that I would have already forgotten.

I've lived for the future for the last decade. "Someday I'll be happy again." But the last 2 years have thrown into sharp relief the fact that "Someday" is a myth that may or may not exist. It may vanish in an instant. Medical science is largely statistics. We know so very little, and understand even less. And I've known this, like we all do deep down, but it's so easy to get sucked into the hustle. And let the hustle cloud our vision. I will get a stronger, larger, clearer piece of glass if that's what it takes to help me see again. See that happiness doesn't live in the past or the future. It lives all around me, with me, right now.