Those Kodak Moments

Why do we take photographs of our life’s events? If it’s to re-live memories than I sometimes believe it’s a waste of time. I realize that by the time I was in college until just last year, I’d remained in different stages of inebriation. And there were photo taken of some of these event. To which, if you held a car battery to my nuts, I couldn’t recall even being there. Great images. And the people in the photos seemed to be having fun. One even looks like me. But nothing. It’s actually numbing because you think you’ll remember these things but you don’t. And therein lies the frustration.

My memory is terrible now. Because I sobered up, my body and mind is rewiring itself right now and seem to dump a lot of excess baggage. This included the sickening feeling of people who’ve fucked me over in life. It’s like your internet search history. When you clear your history, you clear everything. You can’t just pick and choose. There are elements of high school I recall. A few in college and in graduate school. The most part, the feelings and emotions attached to places and moments have vanished. I have a sense I should feel something but I don’t. And it’s painful. I think.

I friend had suggested that it is my mind slowly allowing the uncomfortable world back a bit at a time instead of dropping an anvil at one time. It’s self preservation. Had all those emotions flooded back at once, I’d have killed myself. That surge would’ve leveled me and I’d more than likely throw up. I think that’s why I do feel queasy on daily basis now. Sometimes to a point of fainting. My head swims. My body aches (longer than it should). Weight training has faltered a LOT (but I still go and do what I can). And I am holding onto heftier weight. Atop all this, I am reminded by photos of who I once was. I think I miss those moments. I think they were great. But it’s a shadow. Saw my old apartment in college in one photo. It was me washing dishes. I was so proud of that place, even though it was a total dump. It was my first apartment I ever got alone outside of the dorms. I lived on my own. And it was amazing (I think). I cooked, at the time, I considered gourmet meals. I’d have dinner parties. In fact, I have a video of me and my girlfriend at the time, drinking wine with friends. I’m totally drunk and making prank phone calls. Keep in mind, internet was really new and barely dented college campuses.

I hold photos in my mind, thinking I’d remember things. Have you also noticed the dwindling power of hard copies of photos? I mean the ones you put in an album. That will be the next to die. Then our memories. I wonder if it matters to anyone anymore. It doesn’t seem like it. I think people don’t like to be reminded of the past. And living in it, doesn’t give you a chance to change it. Only your perspective of it. Unless it’s sitting around for which the past will always be in your crawl. It seems like that with the stuff around me. It’s shadows of someone’s place. I think I get the sense of what someone with Alzheimer’s must feel. Frustrating that something you once loved deeply and can intellectually feel that love, yet don’t hold that emotion over you anymore. Maybe that’s why the grip on the past is so 

 tenuous. It’s my mind forcing me to let it go when it’s been anchoring me down for so long. It’s saying “it’s time to not feel those things anymore.” I have been watching a lot of movies lately. Maybe it’s my way to live in someone else’s history while I wait for mine to catch up.