Tuesday, December 16, 2014

One Picture, How Many Words?

I've written, on an earlier post, about my camera and my sentimental attachment.  In the past two years, I've broken three of them, two of which held very fond memories, and lost the latest which had no sentimental value whatsoever.  But, I'm camera-less and missing them all very much.

It's hard for me to believe that I've misplaced a camera because I always had it at the ready and loved the fact that they all fit nicely into my palm.  The latest one must be in this house somewhere but where I do not know.  My memory seems t be getting worse every day and I do know that when we recently decided to get better organized, to put things in more logical locales, I had that baby in my hands and I did place it in a very logical place so someday, it will resurface.  Until then, I'm done with photos.  I'll have to do so much more telling than showing.

I honestly do try to improve my writing skills.  I know a few basic rules.  I love to write, to tell stories, to show with words what I am feeling or want a reader to feel.  I'm not sure that I will ever master that art, I started late.  And, in the new year, I have only one objective, to work harder at all of this.

So many things that I have written have started with a picture, many from my collection of faces, beautiful places, sunsets, and random things I have encountered along my path.  Some, I look for intentionally, others, I swear were placed in front of me by the goddess of creativity, baiting me, asking nothing more than the chance to grow from ordinary to something special if only to me.

My camera is lost, not my words.  But if I did have my camera, just in the past month, I could have shown you so many things. Looks on faces.My friend Jay, when he presented me with a huge box filled with just short of forty Barbie dolls and all of their paraphernalia, that he bought at a "stoop sale" in Brooklyn. My husband's when he exited his doctor's office after his post-op visit at which he was told to "put it all out of your mind" and come back in three months for a check-up; our friend Bob as he told us about the latest PET scan which proved that his tumor had disappeared from the face of the Earth; our beautiful granddaughters, giving their hearts and souls onstage at this year's Nutcracker; their little friends, bouncing up and down with them in the lobby during intermission and after the show - the look of youth and innocence, sheer delight that my hundred dollar camera could never have captured.  Had I a camera, I would have snapped more than one shot of my artwork that is currently hanging on exhibit at the Cultural Center but that photo would never have expressed my fear of rejection, my courage and my little burst of self-confidence. Nor would it have reflected the message that I so wanted to tell my granddaughters.  Also lost to the lens is a glimpse of our newest art acquisition.  She's called "Awakening" and she's spectacular.  Picture this.....a woman's body, beautifully sculpted, naked to the waist, hanging upside down with her hair falling towards the ground, as she emerges from the body of a tree.  Her arms, beautiful brown feathers, are at her side, not yet opened as they will be when she "lands", supporting her emergence from the sheltering world that once was hers.  A photo would never serve it the justice it deserves. I only wish I had a camera to have caught the pride of the artist as she stood beside it allowing her own husband to photograph her.  And, then, there would also have been an earlier photographic memory of the joy found in the faces of the parents of Christopher Malatesta when his exhibition opened to the delight of a crowd of at least a hundred on one evening.  I wish I could have been there with a tiny Nikon in hand, to snap a shot of his mother's face, one who almost lost her artist-son to a tragic accident a few short years ago, never imagining that he would have lost his hearing but kept his talent.

On a funnier note, there is one last shot I would not have wanted to intentionally miss.  The look on my husband's face when I told him that his son-in-law asked me "when did Joe stop dying his hair?".  Priceless.
Just for the record, he has never dyed his hair, ever. His youthful looks are a source of his great self-esteem, one that allows him to take such good care of hiimself. Admirable.

 I'm off to buy myself a new phone.  One that takes pictures. I'm going to try a new tactic.  I've never lost a phone yet. And, besides, I'm ready for a Smartphone!  I just can't miss another of those moments.  Ever.


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