"Requiem," Wolf's Rain
I just got done crying. I was crying over something silly, something that a lot of people won't understand. It's something that means far more to me than one would think.
Pictures, and the destruction of them.
Mama likes to have pictures on the door of the fridge. She puts little magnetic strips on the backs of them and puts them onto the door. There are pictures of me, my siblings, and other relatives. There are lots of older pictures from when I was very small, and even one of the time soon after my brother was born. I suppose this really isn't a surprising or uncommon thing, and it isn't what made me cry.
It's the fact that in the past someone had taken some of the pictures down and scratched them so badly they're ruined. Pictures of me, my sisters, my brother... Some were knocked to the floor and scraped about, while others were scratched with scissors or knives. In all cases the damage was so bad that the picture was well-nigh worthless after. They were pictures that can't be replaced, because the film has been lost and none of them had been scanned into the computer or any such thing. Those were the only copies of those pictures anywhere, and they were wantonly destroyed.
Those who know my real name may also know that I am named after a great-grandmother on my mother's side of the family. There aren't many pictures of the woman I was named after, and I've only ever seen two of them. One is a black and white photograph of her outside in the yard feeding chickens (she was a very self-sufficient woman - she lived through the Depression and kept her children fed and clothed), which is framed and sitting on the baker's rack in the kitchen. The other was a larger color photo of her when she was much older. To my knowledge there are no other pictures of her anywhere, though I could very well be wrong. I rather hope I am, because the last time I saw that second picture someone had scraped off a good portion of her face and had shredded the bottom to ribbons.
Once, a long time ago, my little sister got angry at me. So, she went into the kitchen and took down every picture of me she could find. She threw them at my door, crumpled and bent, and let me know that she had taken them down because she hated me, or somesuch thing like that. I shrugged it off since I knew she was only angry at me because I wouldn't let her do what she wanted. But I let her know in no uncertain terms that if she did such a thing again, to pictures of me or anyone else, and I caught her while doing it she could be quite sure that I would most certainly make her regret it. What I doubt Akachan ever realized (I did all I could to be sure she didn't) was that it did hurt me to see those pictures lying on the floor, bent and marred.
I remember hearing an article a long time ago about a cave painting. It was a very unique painting in that it was of a buffalo (bison?) that wasn't in the conventional pose and it was done in blue pigment, which was quite rare indeed. The article, however, wasn't simply telling about the painting. It was reporting that vandals had completely scraped it away - there was nothing left of the one-of-a-kind ancient cave painting.
What sort of person destroys things that can never, ever be replaced?
To me pictures are quite precious. They're snapshots of a time we can never return to, of people that could leave our lives at any moment, of things that made us smile or cry. Photographs are especially important to me because my memory is so bad that I forget things very quickly, and the only thing I have to remind me of what went on, aside from my journals, are the pictures that were taken. I never want to forget my past, my family's past, because it's all part of what made the present. To destroy them is to destroy part of the past, something that can never be gotten back.
The funny thing about all this is that I wasn't even thinking about it until I read a single line from a fanfic about an old photograph. It was only a sentence, but I read it and I started to cry. It just brought all this to my mind, and I broke down.
I sat down on the futon, hunching over so that I was crying with my forehead pressed against my hands and, incidentally, against Clemy's back as she was slithering through my fingers and coiled around my arms at the time. She moved her head into the space left between my arms as my elbows were on my knees. Somehow one of my tears fell just as she moved her head but she didn't flinch like I'd expected her to when it struck her face (she always flinches when something touches her face unexpectedly). My tear landed on her eye, and it looked like she was crying too.
Pictures, and the destruction of them.
Mama likes to have pictures on the door of the fridge. She puts little magnetic strips on the backs of them and puts them onto the door. There are pictures of me, my siblings, and other relatives. There are lots of older pictures from when I was very small, and even one of the time soon after my brother was born. I suppose this really isn't a surprising or uncommon thing, and it isn't what made me cry.
It's the fact that in the past someone had taken some of the pictures down and scratched them so badly they're ruined. Pictures of me, my sisters, my brother... Some were knocked to the floor and scraped about, while others were scratched with scissors or knives. In all cases the damage was so bad that the picture was well-nigh worthless after. They were pictures that can't be replaced, because the film has been lost and none of them had been scanned into the computer or any such thing. Those were the only copies of those pictures anywhere, and they were wantonly destroyed.
Those who know my real name may also know that I am named after a great-grandmother on my mother's side of the family. There aren't many pictures of the woman I was named after, and I've only ever seen two of them. One is a black and white photograph of her outside in the yard feeding chickens (she was a very self-sufficient woman - she lived through the Depression and kept her children fed and clothed), which is framed and sitting on the baker's rack in the kitchen. The other was a larger color photo of her when she was much older. To my knowledge there are no other pictures of her anywhere, though I could very well be wrong. I rather hope I am, because the last time I saw that second picture someone had scraped off a good portion of her face and had shredded the bottom to ribbons.
Once, a long time ago, my little sister got angry at me. So, she went into the kitchen and took down every picture of me she could find. She threw them at my door, crumpled and bent, and let me know that she had taken them down because she hated me, or somesuch thing like that. I shrugged it off since I knew she was only angry at me because I wouldn't let her do what she wanted. But I let her know in no uncertain terms that if she did such a thing again, to pictures of me or anyone else, and I caught her while doing it she could be quite sure that I would most certainly make her regret it. What I doubt Akachan ever realized (I did all I could to be sure she didn't) was that it did hurt me to see those pictures lying on the floor, bent and marred.
I remember hearing an article a long time ago about a cave painting. It was a very unique painting in that it was of a buffalo (bison?) that wasn't in the conventional pose and it was done in blue pigment, which was quite rare indeed. The article, however, wasn't simply telling about the painting. It was reporting that vandals had completely scraped it away - there was nothing left of the one-of-a-kind ancient cave painting.
What sort of person destroys things that can never, ever be replaced?
To me pictures are quite precious. They're snapshots of a time we can never return to, of people that could leave our lives at any moment, of things that made us smile or cry. Photographs are especially important to me because my memory is so bad that I forget things very quickly, and the only thing I have to remind me of what went on, aside from my journals, are the pictures that were taken. I never want to forget my past, my family's past, because it's all part of what made the present. To destroy them is to destroy part of the past, something that can never be gotten back.
The funny thing about all this is that I wasn't even thinking about it until I read a single line from a fanfic about an old photograph. It was only a sentence, but I read it and I started to cry. It just brought all this to my mind, and I broke down.
I sat down on the futon, hunching over so that I was crying with my forehead pressed against my hands and, incidentally, against Clemy's back as she was slithering through my fingers and coiled around my arms at the time. She moved her head into the space left between my arms as my elbows were on my knees. Somehow one of my tears fell just as she moved her head but she didn't flinch like I'd expected her to when it struck her face (she always flinches when something touches her face unexpectedly). My tear landed on her eye, and it looked like she was crying too.