Camera Angst

An Essay I wrote in June 2011-- a little loquacious, but that's ok.

The Original Camera Angst

I’m slightly tortured every time I push down the silver button to open the shutter on my camera. Just when I think I’ve captured something, some moment, I’m reminded of time and stung by its spinning wheel.  In the moment that light hits the aperture, I remember that the picture I take will end and be bound by the edges of the frame and the rectangular shape of most pictures. I realize that I could not take enough pictures to capture whatever moment is present—it's fleeting and leaves even as I think about it. Even if I could take enough pictures, I don’t think I’d want them, because to capture something doesn’t restore it. I’d miss something if I tried.  

            I am traveling—I have been for the past seven weeks. Often, I have asked myself: how, in the understanding that all my treasured moments must end—all the places I visit, foods I eat, and flowers I smell must end and be left— do I store away these memories more effectively for later use? How can I record the instances in a way which will communicate them meaningfully to others? I am no historian, but I do practice, as other tourists do, the habits of snapping photos, recording videos, and purchasing souvenirs.  I have, as faithfully as possible, kept a journal and a travelogue. I have kept ticket stubs, gathered rocks, pressed flowers, and colored little pictures in an attempt to preseve the moments and store up what I’ve lived through for future recollection—as though it won’t happen naturally.

            Sometimes I second guess myself—do I not have enough faith in my own brain and mind to believe I will remember? We are creatures whose existences are fueled almost solely by our memories and we rise above all other species because we can hang onto our experiences. We call the recollection of these experiences knowledge. And I, a student in ardent pursuit of truth and goodness, can certainly memorize. So I pat myself on the back.

            But then again, I’m astonished by the number of objects I have misplaced and left behind at the hostels we’ve stayed at. I couldn’t remember the other day whether I’d packed my cell phone for the day or not, because if I had, it was lost forever in the underbelly of London.  (I hadn't packed it)

            So no, in some cases, I can’t trust my own mind, which is why I take pictures, keep scraps, and write. Since I can’t stop time, I hope these will fence the moment in, corral it.

            There’s still that little sting though, every time I click the camera to take a photo, because I realize… memory cards (aptly named) can only hold so many images. Writing is a sacrifice of time  which could otherwise be spent in the creation of other experiences. If I spent my time drawing the landscape, I cannot, at the same time, use my feet and explore it. If I gather rocks on the ground, my eyes miss the sky above me. I could wait an entire afternoon for the lighting to be just right to get a great picture—and then not even appreciate it.  And I could spend so much of my time planning how to remember that all I actually remember is the planning itself. You squeeze the knot too tightly-- and what’s important slips out.

            I echo Wallace Steven’s sentiment:

            I do not know which to prefer, the beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes

The blackbird whistling, or just after.

            What forces make a memory?  Do I, through my physical motion and choice, through opening my eyes, make the moment what it is? Do I fashion the memory, or does it fashion itself? And why do I need to know so badly about the forces of enframing and shaping memory? Of enframing, shaping, and fashioning life?

            Eventually, all things will be swallowed up, either by time or by the sun exploding or by the big crunch. I know. Everything moves, everything changes, all things must pass away.

            But it still matters to me. If I were a pygmy, it would still matter. Instant, or innuendo?

            I stare out across a bay. The day is windy so the waves of the water are crested with white foam. I can hear the seagulls and the whishing of the waves, like a mother trying to coddle her stubborn child (the shore) to sleep. It’s beautiful.

            I can’t explain to you everything about this moment and its beauty, but I can give you that. Future self, I pray you will remember. To both of you, try to imagine.

            Imagine a little wave that you’ve singled out from your high precipice above the bay. Because you love the moment, you love the wave. Even as it crashes down into the water, disappearing from the blue, you love it. Another fills its place-- this one you also love. You love the moments and the waves, because here is the photograph you will take come to life. You are loving what can never be captured, so you drink it in gladly. Free from pixilation or rasterization, the waves astound you. If you love the moment, you must love the change as well, right?

            What gives me a moment—time—also gives the waves the ability to play upon themselves, gives the cloud a period to slide over and off of the sun.

            So I love the very thing that fills me with angst—time. Only time and change can cause love within me. Again, Wallace Stevens says it better:

            "Is there no change of death in paradise?


Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs

Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,


Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,


With rivers like our own that seek for seas


They never find, the same receding shores


That never touch with inarticulate pang?"

"Death [change] is the mother of beauty, mystical, within whose burning bosom we devise our earthyl mothers waiting sleeplessly."

Gosh that's pretty. I don't even know what it means but it sounds so nice.

There will be more moments and more things I will be able to love. They will rise up into being, frothy and present. But if you love the little wave, you have to remember and appreciate all the ocean beneath it, too. How can you love the little wave without embracing, or wanting to embrace, the entirety of oceans and seas everywhere? The surface of the moment may recede down into the depths of memory as the particular water droplets may sink deeper into the sea. Both may be hidden and tucked away, never to return or be retrieved. But each moment, like each molecule of water, somehow finds a way to be renewed, like the waters of a Roman bath that bubble warmly up somehow after thousands of years-- through layers of sediment, even.

            Like the water,  memories have a way of rising again, called to mind by a smell, sound, or texture.

            And sometimes, even if you can’t quite remember everything, the knowledge that the thing did happen is enough. My feet, resting side by side, walked each step of the mountain. They carry no blisters or signs of having climbed two mountains, yet there they are, bearing my body day in and day out.  We did climb a mountain, two in fact.

Ben Lomond, one of the mountains we climbed

            There is a kind of love which can overcome the fears, doubts, and troubles of dealing with time--a kind of love that can make a friend even of death and change.

            Sang the Eagles: “You may lose and you may win, but you will never be here again.”

            So take it easy, Em.

            “As this loud brook’s incessant fall in streaming rings restagnates all,

            Which reach by course the bank and then are no more seen; just so pass men.”

           We close our eyes for a moment, and that moment is gone. But the moment gives as it takes, and really, the present moment is all that we have.

            So I’m opening my arms as wide as my aperture. I’m going to love as many of the moments as I can, and let them fall into the satchel of my memory.  Hear that? There’s the sound of a moment passing.