How do we fit into our pasts? Pictures as puzzle pieces, creating distant connections from blurred edges tinged with slipped emotion. Suddenly thrust back into the present moment. Holidays, new pets, a visit from an old friend or relative, a vacation, a new car. Somehow I was always the dirty faced kid amazingly caught for a split second of non-motion. The skateboards, the Kiss albums, that freezing first trip to the snow...
Disjointed moments stolen from the bowels of time, the insatiable monster long since swallowed... As we age trapped in bodies that still associate with the fleeting moments long past, the memories and feelings of the moment refreshed.
Stranger still are the connections to the present and the impossibly slow and hidden junctions fused to create personalities, expressions, moments, experiences, choices caught that hinted at today.
The books on the shelf behind my grandfather, the golfish Fang next to the globe in bumpy relief I would spin for hours as a five year old, slamming my finger down in new unknnown places I wished I could be.
Stories within stories. Our own isolations shared. We are made whole again. Somehow through a collective viewing, with someone new to the family, through the hours spent scanning the forgotten slides by my father... Through this collective sharing the glue is made strong again, ruffled edges, dirty faces, faded colors vivid.
The trip to Yosemite at age 8 that changed my life forever... The place that defined me, where I eventually realized who I was when I returned at 18 and then again and again and again...
The music, the trips, the skateboarding, my bike, the constant motion, the dirtbag... the one that lived for the moment...
No longer any sense of aversion to the slipped past in favor of the present... An embracing, an appreciation, an honoring in the sharing and the memories. A blessing that it can still be shared with those I love, while we live.
Thank you.
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