Kids today still hold a book. E-Readers have not yet been able to replicate a pop-up book and somehow books in general continue to evade digitalization. Music fell a while ago for the most part though there still are those relics who spin the vinyl. Newspapers fell to the onslaught and books are indeed headed that way, especially as the older generations fade to time.
Pictures have been mostly untouchable for years now. We used to buy a few rolls of film with 24 or 36 exposures or perhaps a disposable film camera and head off to a big event or maybe off on a memorable vacation. We would be careful with how much we would shoot as the cost to buy and especially to develop the film could swiftly grow. But not today. Today it is shoot and shoot and shoot- how good is your camera at continuous shots?- and then maybe review and delete what we do not like or what does not look good. More often than not I suspect a lot of bad shots are left in the digital storage graveyard instead of the digital trash. There are few restrictions on how many photos or even videos we can shoot and store. But how much does anyone ever really look at later on? Just buy a bigger hard drive or consign it all to the cloud.
And even camera-only devices are being left mostly just to the specialists. I have a nice camera for special occasions and also for my weak attempt at becoming something more of a photographer. That one is a Nikon. I have a smaller point-and-shoot that can take up to 1000 frames per second in video mode and I use that camera, a Casio, to shoot high-speed athletic activities like batting and pitching. I have two older digital cameras and also a few old and very old film cameras. I no longer have our old Polaroids (wish I did!) but I do have many fond memories of buying film and flash cubes at the local drugstore on a cold and dark and snowy night and then taking pictures on Christmas Eve that slowly developed, in about a minute, using the warmth from my armpit. Don’t have the camera but do have the photos still. Anyone recall?
No, today it is phones with good cameras- almost all with two. The first is an eye to the workd and the second is an eye to me. It used to be that the eye to the world needed to be the higher quality device but now, with so many selfies, the eye to me seems to take precedence. So I point, at myself, and shoot; and then I share with all of my virtual vapor friends. Take it, share it, forget it. It’s done and it’s gone. Like sand through the hourglass…
Still, though, in the back of a cedar-lined closet or perhaps on the very top shelf of an large old dusty bookcase or even boxed away in a dark and dank corner of a basement, throughout this country there still exists those wonderful old photo albums, many with the somewhat staccatissimo story of the distinct and memorable events of a life. Or maybe of a family. Or maybe a group of friends or an old ball team or cheer squad. Or maybe the best vacation trip you ever took or maybe one that was taken by your parents or your grandparents or someone you never even knew. Maybe a group of co-workers from a place worked at long ago. So many possible stories in so many lives across so many years.
Do you have one of those? And did you ever look through it? If you did so once you did so a hundred times. And if you did so with someone else who explained the pictures to you or to whom you explained the pictures then that simply made the experience all the more a moment in life so worth remembering. The moment you spent looking at those captured moments on film, memorable even more so if you yourself did the capturing, turns itself into yet another special and memorable moment. So take a selfie of you looking at those touchable photos and send it out to the world.
And you easily know what is on each next page of that old album. And you know the little nuances of each picture and which ones are in color and which ones are in black and white before you even see them. And you learned who all the unknown people are, or were, so now they are no longer unknown. And you recognize the aging pages and the method of attachment- maybe actual sleeves (more modern) or scotch tape or those old triangular corner holders, whatever they were called. You even know the smell of the book if it has one. And the sound of the pages as they turn. And when you are done there is one more picture still to be seen.
It is the one of someone now long gone and it has a special place somewhere in the book because it cannot be easily attached for long ago it was torn, ripped to where it actually fell out of the book and no one has yet taken the time to put it back where it once was. It is stuck perhaps in the back of the book or just simply resides tucked between the pages. It is ripped and it is torn and it is maybe no longer clear where it belonged in the book, in the life, but it is still there. It is the orphan but still greatly loved.
And you know it because you have seen it so many times and never chose to move it. It is as it was when you found it and there it rests still as the book is closed and put away to age along with you; later to give way to an electronic pad that will all too soon take its place on the shelf, in the closet, or locked away in a box in the dank and dark corner of the basement.
Do yourself a favor this Valentine’s Day. Take that book out and spend some time remembering as it works its magic in telling its story at least one more time. Just for you.