Captured. (Illustrated Version)
Dear Neil Armstrong,
Cameras should freeze time, stop it dead in its tracks, rotate it around like bullet time video, but they don't, and it's sad.
 |
So, I'm 19 years old now, not much in the big scheme of things, but older than I've ever been, and now I'm even older, as They Might Be Giants informed me when I saw them in Ohio with my friends.
So, all along my crazy trips this year, I have diligently hauled my digital camera and taken tons of silly photos. Why? Capturing moments, I suppose. These things won't come again. Plus, taking pictures is a fun to do in its own right. Getting good composition, lighting, color, subject, etc., etc.
 |
They Might Be Giants fit in well with an idea I kicked around a lot with my friends while in Ohio: A super hero who can grow bigger. Notice I didn't say smaller. So, of course, this guy is continually fighting bigger monsters as the series goes on, and he's always looking for bigger apartments, then warehouses, until, finally, he has to live all alone out in the empty woods of northern Canada or wherever. All because the National Guard couldn't handle one single 50-story tall monster. It's a kind of sad story. Change overwhelms.
My mother wanted to measure my height and weight as a birthday 'quantification' (her word). *No thank you hand wave*
 talkin' 'bout cafeteria lady?' |
This growth only hero sprang from my prom weekend pit stop in Colatown's own University of the Southernmost Carolina, where my friends Mitch and James declared I was such a monster after watching me hilariously squeeze out of the 4Runner I borrowed for the weekend. (They independently asked me if the guy from whom I borrowed the car was particularly tiny, thus allowing me to bully it away from him.)
So way back in high school senior English, I read Wilfred Owen's "Disabled" and one line poked me in the metaphoric eye. It said the amputee veteran would never again "feel how slim girls' waists are." At the time, I was feeling my then girlfriend's waist quite regularly, and it was quite a thing to think that one would never again feel the meltingly soft flesh of a girl's waist wrapped in one's arms. To lose all hope of feeling that forever would make life dull and, perhaps, worthless.
 |
So, my golden memory from prom came while we awaited seating at the restaurant of our pre-prom meal. We sat together, my date and I, and reacting to some now forgotten stimuli, she put her head on my shoulder as though tired and acting caricature-ishly I stretched my arm behind her.
Time froze there with my hand on her delicate chest, her ribs beneath my fingers, her body swelling and shrinking in the rhythmic pattern of sleep breathing. At that moment everything was. And it was right! And I've missed it so dearly.
 |
Anyhow, I reread "Disabled" for my English 11-World War I poetry class in my school term just ended. It was neat to see the poem again after such a long time, but it was painful to think that I had been a year without a waist to check regularly for slimness.
So, my first year at Furman is over, but uncaptured. My camera's 64MB memory stick can only representatively display the changes the year wrought, never truly possess them. In spite of using megapixel resolution, things have been left out, lost forever. Everything outside the frame of focus is gone, but for the memory.
All these moments in life, they don't fit into a camera. Some say that was Manet's impetus for the development of the impressionistic style—taking art beyond what the camera could capture, to what was behind it all. I argued as much on my art history final exam. All the Degas and Reniors, Manets and Monets that I saw in the Musee d'Orsay senior year came back to me in class without the aid of photographic record. I wish I had known then what I know now about art, but, of course, what I know now about art, I know because what I saw then gave me the desire to learn more about art now. *Sigh*
 |
In that cycle of times, which is life on earth, graduation came again to the Governor's School as surely as the sun rises and sets. This day marked also the day of my birth. So, my brother and I, we drove off in the early Saturday hours, stopping at last at the Carolina Lunch in Hartsville, SC. After some hash browns and complimentary toast, we watched another graduating class die, another group of alumni be born all while everyone prowled about stage in identity concealing caps and gowns. *squint*
(Note: The Honorable Alex Sanders, Jr. requested the audience retain this information from his speech: "If we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've already got.")
 |
All throughout the graduation process, I snapped photographs of passers-by indiscriminately and once more cleaved to the waist of my ex-girlfriend. Funny conversation:
"I need to get my purse."
"You and your purses…"
"I am a girl."
"That's just what you claim."
"You of all people should know."
*blush*
Emphasis is on the Sans Merci with this Belle Dame...
So again, the camera failed, capturing neither her voice nor curves nor touch.
Cameras don't work.
After graduation, we class of 2000 kids ate at Little Italy, and Ryan Rhome was playing with his iZone Polaroid camera. He now has a lovely photo of Jessica and me with which to remember the occasion. If only the whole meal developed slowly in the palm of one's hand and could thenceforth be re-experienced. After that, all the other C/O 2Ks headed off to Chucktown for a Jump Little Children concert. Me, I had to return and face my birthday party.
 Calvin(left top), Calvin's good side (left bottom), and Hobbes (right) |
I wish life were like "Calvin and Hobbes." Those two were perpetually replaying the cycle of seasons: winter snow goons, spring school dodging, summer explorations, autumn leaf piles. No changes were of a permanent nature. Each Christmas Calvin blew his big chance for a flame-thrower. Each fall, he began first grade.
Buddhism teaches that suffering or dukkha is bounded up in the temporal nature of existence. I know this because in my now past tense religion class, I did a brief report on the subject. Even the supposed permanence of cameras fall before dukkha says Buddha. Perhaps so, but not Calvin nor Hobbes.
My birthday party was pretty standard faire, and I mostly handled questions about college and my doings there. Yes, I wore a lab coat, but no, I didn't tape a cafeteria tray to my head, and so forth. I blew out the candles before I was supposed to, and motions were made toward staging the photo by "blowing out" smoke, but nothing came of it. As if cameras weren't bad enough, now they can lie too!
 |
In his Earthbound existence, my friend Seth kept running into this photographer. He was such a wonderful and charming fellow. He told Seth to smile and say, "Fuzzy pickles." Seth then flashed the peace sign and the cameraman twirled away. When those days of adventure had come to an end, the photographer returned and showed Seth all the places they had been. It was so bittersweet (as one can imagine a fuzzy pickle would be) to see all they had been through come to an end. In fact, some of the photos were wrong; it showed Marla or Soze or LP where they hadn't been, but I guess we know by now that cameras are liars, capable of glossing over life's harsh truths.
Neil, I know how the government asked you to take a bunch of photos way back when you made camp on the moon's surface. I guess they wanted to record forever what a wonderful thing you did in going there. I imagine all the returned astronauts keep on their refrigerator door a photo of themselves on the lunar soil. It must be quite a thing to be reminded of one's life pinnacle each time you need milk for your Cheerios. But, I also know Neil, you have no pictures of yourself directly. You're just the guy in Buzz's visor, reflected. And I suppose that's all any photo is, a reflection of life's richness, because, unfortunately, cameras don't work.
Days pass slowly on the moon, taking a month by earthly standards. And the earth neither rises nor sets there for your dusty American outpost. I suppose time moves slower too, in all the ways that matter, so perhaps, on the moon at least, you can go ahead and leave the camera in your suit's pocket.
…
Sing the birthday song for me! (And now I'm older still…)
