Beauty

I walked out of the exam room, spent and unsure of myself, unsure even though I had been thor­oughly iden­ti­fied. Every ten years most doc­tors have to renew their vows, so to speak. This is done by tak­ing a five hour test in a cubi­cle in a test­ing cen­ter on a com­puter. No more sealed book­lets and bub­ble sheets and pen­cils. Now it is palm vein read­ers for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. I thought: if they only knew what my palm was say­ing right now, but the lit­tle reader couldn’t get past lin­ing up my palm veins with the worry lines on the dig­i­tal photo of my face. So there I was, lined up, in a line, stay­ing in the lines of my life, tak­ing the quiz. When I fin­ished, I grabbed my cam­era and told myself I was going to find some­one beautiful.

And I did. They found me, actu­ally. Brit­tney and Mark were pos­ing for shots in Pio­neer Square in Port­land, tak­ing advan­tage of the twin­kles at the hol­i­days, tak­ing advan­tage of love and the energy between them. They needed some­one to take their pic­ture. We traded cam­eras back and forth, and they were their good-looking selves for my photo, which I like a lot.

It’s a lit­tle thing, but I can’t deny that I made my inten­tion to find some­one beau­ti­ful to pho­to­graph. I could have said inter­est­ing, trou­bled, what­ever. It’s not magic. I was look­ing for what found me. I am obser­vant. I put myself in the way of beauty and it rolled over me. No com­plaints. I left for the drive home feel­ing like I had finally accom­plished some­thing for the day.

This pic­ture is #5 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pic­tures taken by other pho­tog­ra­phers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page