Once upon a time, he remembered.
He began:
“The reason I love photography so much is
because the lens of a camera is like a third eye. It gives us a method by which
we might see something in a brand new way, to be closer to our subjects during
the moment before our finger leaves the shutter button.”
His gaze swept briefly across the room,
over the range of expressions before him.
Blurred.
He once remembered
how they were barely visible in the dim light from the
projection screen.
Like abandoned flowers, out of focus.
Like forgotten spider webs floating in the sun.
Like a hummingbird’s wings while in flight,
transparent, seen
from the edges.
Brief.
He remembered talking at some people,
their glazed-over glances toward his face. But he also remembered the bright
conversations with the alert, the attentive.
He continued.
“Don’t you think it’s amazing that man
has taught himself how to discover and how to see something new, and to share
it with others in this way? And just take a moment to consider that a tiny chip
can hold hundreds of photographs. How phenomenal is that?”
He remembered that his eyes took
another trip around the few feet of the room within his own depth of field.
He remembered noticing how a few of
their eyes would dart to the clock in the corner, drifting reluctantly back to
the front of the room, looking toward his general area and settling there for a
time. Soon their eyes would crawl back to the corner clock.
Glazed-over, lazy looks.
Like icing on donuts.
Like dew on grass.
Captured and
remembered forever
in those tiny memory chips.
But that was a long
time ago.
Once upon a time, back when he could still
remember his name, he spoke about memory cards in a frivolous way. He took
their ability for granted, because he never thought that one day, he might not
be able to remember like the memory cards in his cameras.
