underwear on head 3/09

While walking on the beach today I noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the sand. For some reason I reached for it and picked it up. It was a photograph of a young girl probably about 5 or 6. She had bright red hair and had a pair of underpants on her head fashioned like a hat. She had a large smile on her face, most likely because of the underwear on her head. It was a cute picture and something my own daughter has done as she laughs hysterically. I turned the photo over and written on the back in pencil was "underwear on head, 3/09". It seemed laughable to label a photograph like this. It was so obviously a girl with underwear on her head. There did not seem to be any room for misinterpretation. I started thinking about labeling certain memories of my own, scribbling something in pencil on the back of the photo paper, followed by the month and the year. There are memories I struggle to remember as I get older, as well as those moments that are inevitably etched into my brain. It is almost like the good memories fade faster for me than the more traumatic memories. I would love to be able to peel out all the negative memories from my photo album, label the backs of the photo paper with the event and the date, then scatter them across a windy beach. I could release any ownership I still claimed of these moments, leaving them partly sticking out of the sand for someone else to discover, glance at the rawness of a stranger's life only to drop them to the ground and move on. After contemplating a few of the pictures I might collect from my albums, label and then scatter, I came up with these moments; the first moment in public school when I felt insignificant and ugly 5/83. The moment I used someone just to make myself feel better, 9/89. The day I made someone else's day miserable, 7/98. The moment I realized I would have to break my marriage vows, 3/08.

Conversely there are moments that defy labels, when writing on the back of the photo would be laughable, like the underwear on the head moment. The day my daughter was born. The day I realized that the path my life could take was up to me, completely. The day I closed the door on my own slow death and made the choice to live again.

I like to imagine that I can I hear the snap of the shutter and a bright flash of light documenting every day that I wake up and begin to create new moments. At age 36, I now understand that I can have a portfolio of scattered negativity or albums bursting with brilliant points of color lining my shelves.