Shopping For A Living

PHOTOS


Photos
in a drawer
stashed
in envelopes

each memory
mixed
as if life
had been
shuffled
like
playing cards...

Filing life
into
organized
chronological
piles
did not
sit right
when finished

each
memory
feat neatly
piled high
in a
Christmas
shopping
bag...


I've mentioned that I get my pictures out of a paper sack. Well, here is the sack. It's full of pictures I have yet to scan. Stories I have yet to tell.

I wonder if I'll have the time to get through them all? Will life intervene, as it almost always does, and take away my free moments?

Will I get it all told before I lose the will to tell?

Who knows?

Who cares?

Life will happen to me one way or the other.

LIFE. I will either be telling it, or living it, or neither, in which case I won't have an opinion about it, now will I?

In that pile of photos is a dead girl. She died at 39 of a mysterious brain and blood problem. Either a clot or an aneurism. Or something similar and different to both. Her parents did not want to find out. It didn't matter. Their daughter died. That was what mattered.

In her death I remembered what life meant. We dated but could not agree on the basic stuff. The basic stuff never amounted to her death. This is what I learned from her.

Her death came as sudden as an unexpected love letter from someone you never met.

"I love you" is what her death tried to say to all who knew her. And "live."

"I love you. Live"

You can't get more from a life than that.

In that pile of photos are pimples and awkward moments. Bad haircuts and friends who have long since been lost to the vagaries of disparate paths. In that pile there are days piled high on days. Weeks running smack dab into weeks.

Time laying down it's red carpet before the gauntlet...

I have lots of stories to tell. My life has been relatively "storied".

There are moments in my life that make me smile just to recollect. It's like dumping an empty bag upsidedown and finding an old piece of Halloween candy. There is a photo. There is a memory. Ahhh, I remember something that still amuses me...

I still believe every soul has a Christmas bag full of memories. I'd sure like to hear them. I'm all ears. I'm paying attention. Tell me something that makes you smile, everytime you rethink about it.

Magic moments occur because those who they happen to believe in magic.

I believe in magic.

I have the photos to prove it.