i was rummaging through our giant chesterfield of pictures today. i am rummaging because my mom turns the big five-oh on friday and i am making her a special collage canvas in commemoration of said event. i mean, you only turn fifty once. in my case, i hope to never make it to fifty and stay twenty five forever. as i was looking through the broken photo albums and boxes of triplicates, i found that i was sad for every generation that is accustomed to digitalizing everything. there are teeny tiny holga like pictures in these boxes and pictures that are just so perfectly messy that i find myself sad that digital people won't get these gems to pass down. i find it so poetic that when one takes a picture with a manual camera, to capture said perfection, it turns out overexposed and blurry. poetry! beautiful picture poetry. but with a digital camera, you don't get the same effect. don't get me wrong, i love digital cameras and their immense handiness and efficiency but i miss and love the beauty of a manual camera. it's a surprise every time you take a picture because you don't know how it is going to turn out. i have loads of stupid pictures in my drawers in my room of my blurry face because i didn't know how it was going to turn out. did i know it might be stupid? probably. did it stop me? never.
it was a nice jaunt down memory lane today. i found pictures of people i haven't seen since that photo was taken or of uncles with terrible mullets or of my mom walking down the aisle on her wedding day smiling that big ol' smile she has. i know now that wasn't her happiest day and that she is happier, dare i say it, now rather than before. it's really hard for me to picture my mom other than being my mom. she's right sometimes when we argue and jesus, i hate to be the first one to admit it. she'll throw around the phrase "i am human too, not just your mom" as if it means something to me. it didn't then but it does now. she wore jean cutoffs like i do and sat in lawn chairs with cake on a napkin and cut her hair or grew it out and she was twenty just like me. she was tiny and smiled a lot but wasn't really happy. she had this whole other life and as much as she wishes she didn't live it, excluding having my sister and myself, she had it. it makes me think that i should stop bitching about the life i have and live it because i don't want to wake up one day and be in the same position.
i won't. i can't.
i think i am doing an alright job so far at living. it doesn't have to be about the relationships you have or getting laid every weekend. i love the people i know, the places i've been, the concerts i've gone to and some of the things i've written. i want to chronicle everything and sometimes chronicling means not living but not always. not with me.
