The Memories I've Forgotten

My computer is running low on memory. Not that I don't have extra storage space. I have plenty of that. I'm just low on space on my laptop. At roughly 15MB per file, my photographs, as well as my vast library of music, each eat away at about 140GB each, leaving my Finder screens with anything between "1.8 GB Available" to "4 GB Available."

So, in a desperate measure to download The Chi-Lites entire discography, I decided to boot up Lightroom and take out all of the photos I don't need. And, in the process, coupled with the music playing ("Breathe" by Telepopmusik and then "Feel Good Lost Reprise" by Broken Social Scene), I felt an enormous rush of emotion come over me as I perused, my finger held down on the forward arrow, the entire library of my digital photographic experience shown to me in fast forward like Ed Kashi's Iraqi Kurdistan without any talent. In a few short minutes, I brushed through the 10 thousand or so photographs taken in the past 14 months, and as I had initially decided to delete some of the "non-takers," I found that process to be ultimately impossible.

You see, in all of the imperfect frames and the poorly exposed photographs that just didn't quite make it, there was a reflection of myself. All of these memories I myself had forgotten, lost in my day-to-day activities that made me focus too much on the future and not enough on the past. I tried to delete some, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to delete a single file, save the pure black exposures (which escape me to this date why they weren't deleted at the time of their import).

All of these moments I had forgotten. Though many will never see the light of day (I am very sensitive about showing my own work, and only show what I like, which is very little), they exist and serve their purpose. Displayed, in a rush, you could watch my photographic eye evolve (or in some cases, devolve). So many of these images represent me. The places I have been. From Syracuse to Slovakia, Auschwitz to America; from heroin addicts to haircuts and all the way to the Inauguration of Barack Obama. They are what my eyes have seen. And I don't want to forget them.