Say Cheese!

Some people photograph gorgeous landscapes and graceful architecture and city skylines. They document their journey through life by the places they've explored, the sunsets they've captured. In the vacation album, they are waving pinpricks against the striated and cavernous maw of the Grand Canyon. I find these photos fascinating and often breathtaking... but for some reason, I can't do that. I do people. Every time I make my camera ready to capture a scene, I am compelled to take a few steps closer, to zoom in on that thoughtful expression or the smile wrinkles framing those kind eyes. In my albums, you can't really tell whether it's Paris or Windhoek or Jerusalem, Notre Dame or the Dome of the Rock... but you notice the way he's looking at her out of the corner of his eye, the way she furtively scratches her nose, the way the children's shy eyes peer out from behind their mothers' skirts. That's the way I prefer to remember my past... through the faces.

When I look at old photographs I am transported not back to the nuts and bolts of the scene, but to the emotion that fleshed it out, to the people who shared it with me. I am filled with longing or laughter, loneliness or love.

Last night my Wittenberg friends threw me a surprise party. Heather led me blindfolded through the streets to the place where a marvelous barbecue had been prepared. This morning my camera is filled with portraits of smiling party guests, surprising me with their joy and their number, meeting each other because they are my friends and someone had invited them to join the plot to make me happy on my birthday. Technically, they are not great pictures. I gave no thought to composition or background or lighting. But they hold the faces of my friends, and they hold joy.

My emotions can get pretty complicated sometimes... some old photos bring back layers of emotional nuance wrapped in enigma, complicated by my overanalysis and second-guessing of myself. Tentative advances, abrupt retreats, captured on film for my remembering pleasure. I mostly just accept that this is a part of me, and deal with the complications that come from wearing my heart on my sleeve for all the world to ridicule.

But today it was different, a little. Today my emotions were coming in clear, like someone had tuned away the emotional static. I was Happy!Jess when I had a great meeting at work and Grateful!Jess when my roommate cooked me dinner and Sad!Jess when we sang my recently-deceased professor's favorite chorale and ProudOfMyself!Jess when I realized that I am singing in an actual choir... and overall there is this fiery ball of glowy contentment burning inside me and I am just glad to be alive. Can someone please take a picture? I want to remember this.