(no subject)
One of the hardest things to do is to toss out something that contains a memory. Even if the memory isn't powerful or meaningful, the knowledge that I will stop remembering it when the object it is associated with is tossed away always makes it a touch too difficult to do.
I have a photo of a lighthouse taken by a girl I wasn't exactly friends with but kind of was in high school. We were the kind of friends who had no intention of staying in touch, if that makes it clearer, but we sat next to each other in class and could spend a friendly afternoon in each other's company. She was in a photography class one spring and agreed to teach me how to develop film. We took a roll she had recently shot into a darkroom and she showed me which chemicals to pour in what order to get an image, and after a few attempts, she let me try. I've kept the resulting print - a poorly developed black and white copy of a photo that was a touch out of focus to begin with, lines from the poorly applied solution waving across the sky, looking almost like clouds but mostly like a mistake. Wherever I traveled in the next few years, I would tape the photo up on a wall, an innocuous image filling up space. And now it keeps falling off the wall and I went to toss it away and I can't make myself.
The friend I made it with doesn't matter to me. I have no idea where the photo was taken or of which lighthouse it is. I never developed film again, so it wasn't the first step in enjoying a hobby I would practice for the rest of my life. It's just a photo from an afternoon I can hardly remember when I still believed that skills like photography were simple to acquire and maybe I would, just for fun. And I have this dreadful feeling it will follow me for the rest of my life.
I have a photo of a lighthouse taken by a girl I wasn't exactly friends with but kind of was in high school. We were the kind of friends who had no intention of staying in touch, if that makes it clearer, but we sat next to each other in class and could spend a friendly afternoon in each other's company. She was in a photography class one spring and agreed to teach me how to develop film. We took a roll she had recently shot into a darkroom and she showed me which chemicals to pour in what order to get an image, and after a few attempts, she let me try. I've kept the resulting print - a poorly developed black and white copy of a photo that was a touch out of focus to begin with, lines from the poorly applied solution waving across the sky, looking almost like clouds but mostly like a mistake. Wherever I traveled in the next few years, I would tape the photo up on a wall, an innocuous image filling up space. And now it keeps falling off the wall and I went to toss it away and I can't make myself.
The friend I made it with doesn't matter to me. I have no idea where the photo was taken or of which lighthouse it is. I never developed film again, so it wasn't the first step in enjoying a hobby I would practice for the rest of my life. It's just a photo from an afternoon I can hardly remember when I still believed that skills like photography were simple to acquire and maybe I would, just for fun. And I have this dreadful feeling it will follow me for the rest of my life.