A photographed life

So, while I should be sitting at my mac tonight, working up images like a fool, I just can't find my editing groove. My mind- my body, they are elsewhere.

In a spare room at the back of the house, I find myself standing, staring, looking up at something significant in my life, but long ago forgotten. Photo albums. Too many of them. In columns, they are stacked from shelf to ceiling. What memories do they hold and why have I abandoned them? That is what I feel. I reach up, pausing, agonizing on where to start. Which one do I pull down first? It really doesn't matter, I need to look through them all, even though I know I can't do that tonight. It will take some time. Probably days, days which I do not have right now.

Just as I keep this blog now, I once kept images of my life before, my photographic life. With each new roll exposed, I would edit down to my favorite few and add them to the current album. And now, as I look through the pages of my archived life I rediscover lost friends and vanished places, heartache and happiness, loneliness and love. It's all there. And I feel all these emotions as I turn each page and look into faces staring back at me.

It is with ironic joy tonight, that, stuck under a clouded plastic album page, I find this black and white image of myself. A first self portrait maybe. Taken nearly 20 years ago in a room in a house that is now close to 1100 miles from my own. My best friend's room. Yet, in just a few short days I will only be a block away from the house that this room is in. I now think that maybe this picture found me tonight. That lion in the background, in the painting, the one that I really don't remember, I wonder if it's still there. I may have to find out.