Paths

When I got home last night, I looked around my condo for a bit, something I don't do very frequently. You know how you just live in a place and quit really seeing things. You can look directly at that spot on the corner where the paint has chipped off and forget that it is even there, even as you're looking at it. You close the blinds every day, seeing that spot where you broke them while flipping the mattress over about three years ago, and you remember that you need to look for nonstandard size blind only once in a blue moon. We live with imperfections because we train ourselves not to see them.

And then someone will come over. Or the sun will come out. Or you'll sit somewhere you haven't sat in a long time. And you look at your house from a different perspective. You see the spiderwebs on the window sill. You see the rust spot on the white carpet from the leg of the crappy table you got from your grandmother. You see the ring in the toilet that you never ever use.

Last night I started looking at photographs I had around my place. Photos in frames that I don't really look at other than when I dust them, thinking of the horrible haircut I had, or why do I always have a beer in my hand when the flash goes off. Pictures of me with college friends. From trips to the Carribbean. From places overseas. From graduate school.

And then, because I'd had a couple of beers, I started digging through my file drawers, looking for pictures from those trips. That one picture? With the guy with the amazing blue eyes and incredible eyelashes? Where did that go? I know it is here somewhere. God, look how thin I was. Look how young I was.

It doesn't seem so long ago. I can remember those trips. Walking through Tuzla in the middle of the night, taking pictures of my new friends. Taking pictures of the shrine in the middle of town, where kids, only a few years younger than me, had died in a bombing. Sitting on those buses for hours and hours and listening to the crazy French guy bitch about how Americans are making the world impossible for smokers. A school of fish swarming around...well, nevermind what they were swarming for. It was still a cool picture.

There's a picture of me at graduation from graduate school. There's a day that was fuzzy. I remember I wore a red suit. It is in my closet even now. The skirt's too short and the jacket too long. Very Ally McBeal. Or a song by Cake. But it'll come in handy for something someday. And pictures from our graduation picnic. I spilled something all over that sweater I borrowed. And pictures of the lake cruise. I honestly don't even remember that picture taken that night...of all of us in front of Joe Jean's house.

And lots of pictures of David-Eric. How did I end up with so many pictures of him? Right. Because he's an attention whore. Or was. I still can't believe he's not around anymore.

All these pictures, telling the story of my life. Moments that seem like they happened just yesterday. Moments I can't even recall but that I somehow felt would be important. Important enought to commemorate in a photograph. I look at myself in those photos and think, simultaneously, that I don't look all that different and that I look so innocent, so naive.

I guess that's how it happens. How you get older. First on the inside. Then on the outside.

Oh! Look! A picture of Shelly Hack!