strangers

I had the day off today, so I scanned/photographed each of my old photographs I've collected over the past year. I figured I owed it to them. They sit on my wall and stare at me when I am home working in my office. They at once comfort and scare me when I take little breaks and lean back in my chair scanning over them. I want to make a little website for them and this was the first and most daunting step of the process.

Some days I'll just pause on one image and I am flooded with little details about their lives, their relationships, their mental states. I get sad when I think that their photos are on MY wall, a complete stranger. Wasn't there anyone who wanted their images when they passed away? I've been keeping journals since I was 16, and the thought that someday they will more than likely be thrown away because no one will care about them makes it feel useless. And my family photos? I don't even want to think about the day that someone buys them in a large shoebox of miscellaneous junk at an estate sale or what not...and mingia, that's if I'm lucky enough that someone would even want to purchase my "junk" in the first place!

When I was in New Orleans last year I brought my stack of photos up to the counter at an antique store and the little old man behind it started telling me the people's names in the pictures, and little tidbits about them. He paused for some time at some of them and shook his head smiling...telling me where they lived, when some of them died, etc. That's when I noticed that of all of the hundreds of images I'd just browsed through, I selected a few of the same people throughout their life. Some still had the black construction paper on the back that had stuck to the adhesive that once held them in photo albums. They must have died and someone dismantled the books, and here they were indexed in large boxes in a small antique store on Magazine St.

Anyway, it struck my heart as I stood listening to him, I am too sensitive for my own good sometimes but I just wanted to reach out and hold him. My eyes latched onto him with a severity. Every once in a while a complete stranger will be taken straight into the core of my heart. The fact that I was taking away a little piece of his history and memories with me really meant something to me. I didn't feel I had the right to take the pictures, so I guiltily assured him that I thought they were all precious and would be appreciated in my care. The whole process took about 10 minutes perhaps, but it doens't matter, its moments like that that make me know I am not as alone as I always think I am. We are all little pieces of those we love anyway, even if that person happens to be a stranger who we only had in our grasp for 10 minutes.