Can’t Have it Back

As Sodom & Gomor­rah burned for being espe­cially wicked, Lot and his clan were run­ning out of there. Lot’s wife (whose name is not even men­tioned) gets turned to salt for turn­ing around to have a look. Sup­pos­edly this a story about dis­obe­di­ence. I choose to think that it is a reminder that time is prob­a­bly a one way river. It has always struck me that I would be extremely likely to end up as a condi­ment if I had to tear my eyes from all that ruckus. As I have said before, I believe we all have a voyeur in us. I think she was harshly treated for the very human response to want to take a piece of time with her.

If you ask a per­son what items they would res­cue from their burn­ing house (people/pets are safe), many would say pho­tos. We can’t buy back time no mat­ter how hard we grasp, but we have been given the gift of mem­ory. Our senses have murky sides that pro­duce mem­o­ries – like rear view mir­rors on time: if ever I were to smell White Shoul­ders per­fume again I would be invol­un­tar­ily trans­ported back to the 7^th grade and Beth Williams; when I hear Pic­tures of You by The Cure I am in my senior year of high school; last week I poured Pop Rocks out of the lit­tle enve­lope onto my tongue because I knew I would be back in the 6^th grade, dur­ing recess at Trin­ity Lutheran School; when I feel the soap from the scrub sink hit my hands I am often taken back to the first day of my surgery rota­tion as a med­ical stu­dent; and when I see a pho­to­graph of some­one I love, usu­ally a snap­shot, every­thing about the day seems to be mine, again.

These lit­tle sen­sory mirages give us every means to not for­get. Flickr has bil­lions of pho­tographs of every­thing imag­in­able – for exam­ple there are 193 peo­ple in a group devoted pho­tog­ra­phy of men wear­ing knee high socks. I am sure they have their rea­sons. Every­one is furi­ously putting lit­tle rec­tan­gles of light into dig­i­tal cages, furi­ously hold­ing on to that moment and that one, oh, and that one.

It is intim­i­dat­ing to think about mak­ing an orig­i­nal photo sometimes…until I remem­ber that this time river is extremely wide and we each get an equal spot in the water. Maybe we can’t go back­wards, but no one else has my par­tic­u­lar view. I have earned my lit­tle spot in the river just because I am here and so I make pic­tures to remem­ber my ride, and because some­times they are beau­ti­ful which is the best rea­son of all.