photographic memory

I got a roll of film developed recently, which I shot when I was testing out a friend's camera. It turns out that there's something wrong with the camera and the film didn't advance, so all the pictures were exposed on the same frame. The photo store actually developed this one frame and gave it to me, but they didn't charge me. I was kind of disappointed, but...

It's a really nifty picture. Some parts are so overlaid with multiple images that they just become abstractions, but in other areas, only one or two images can be made out, and very clearly at that.

I started thinking about memories. Normal photos are not like memories. They're single, frozen moments, very clear and precise. This multiple-exposure, on the other hand, is exactly like memory. It has a whole bunch of moments, all together, all forming a sort of composite memory. That's how I remember things: many instances, events, images - all at once, all blending together.

What a happy accident this was.

Images

this is what I see...

A young man walks down the middle of a suburban street, beneath a late afternoon summer sky. His clothes are dirty, and look well-worn. The street, lined with near-identical looking houses, stretches on in front of him as far as the eye can see. About thirty meters away, there is a neighbourhood park to one side of the street. There are some cars parked on the sides of the street, but no cars driving down the street itself. We can see that the cars nearest the young man are rusted in places, looking like they have not been used in years. There are scattered knots of young people gathered talking and children playing, in driveways and in the street itself. All the lawns are overgrown and untended, with extremely long grass growing in them.

We see a street sign, with a house in the background. The paint and lettering have flaked off the sign, leaving mostly just bare metal exposed. The various windows of the house behind it are either shattered or missing. The curtains inside rustle in the breeze.

The young man walks into the park. In front of him, the ground is unkempt like the lawns, looking like it hasn’t been mowed in years. There are people all over: young kids kick a ball around in the empty swimming pool, older kids use the swings that aren’t simply dangling chains with snapped seats, and teen groups or couples are nestled in alcoves of the playstructure, or under the trees that line the park. There are no adults.

Near the playstructure, a teenage girl stands talking with two teenage boys. Their clothes aren’t especially clean, and show signs of wear. She twirls her long hair in her hand, as both guys look into her eyes. We do not see her face.

Under a tree, several teens are sitting in a circle. Two of them have acoustic guitars, and as those two play, all of them are singing, with contented looks on their faces.

On the other side of the park, the young man approaches another street that borders the park. He looks to the side, where on a flattened area of grass by the treeline, several older kids have spread out blankets on the ground, with many household items (such as kitchen utensils, toys, books, and pictures) arranged on them. They sit behind their blankets, and other kids holding their own items have gathered around. One such kid behind a blanket is conducting a trade with one of the kids gathered there.

The young man crosses through the middle of an abandoned intersection, the traffic lights dead. Vacant cars sit still in the otherwise empty street, some rusted, with flat tires and some broken windows. In the distance, a group of kids runs along the street.

The young man walks down a gently curved freeway onramp, tracing his fingers along the sound barrier to his right. Ahead of him, the freeway stretches, pavement cracked, abandoned cars scattered across the lanes. A young woman, with long hair and in worn clothes, is leaning against a stopped car in the first lane at the end of the ramp. She looks at the young man with a familiar smile.

The young man and the young woman walk hand in hand between the lanes of cars under the bright afternoon sun. The freeway stretches off into the distance ahead of them.

change

Went to the pub last night to celebrate the end of a crazy week of work. Sadly, not too many of the regulars were there - I guess they're still swamped. Saw some people I knew, though, and hung out with some fellow film students who were as glad as I was that our Film Theory essays were handed in.

A friend of mine said that eating a cookie and drinking a beer (which I was doing) was really gross. I was sad. I'd done it before, and I guess I never noticed how disgusting it was. I mean, it was a good cookie and an excellent beer. Hmph. Well, I was enjoying it...


Sometimes when I look over the skyline, I wish for some kind of change. A big change. Something that would take the current social order and tear it apart. Something that would force everyone to re-evaluate their lives and their perceptions of their world. I want something to happen that will force us to totally reorganize our society - into what, I don't know. But we desperately need to be shaken up. I can sense it everywhere. Just walking down the street, it's like the mutter of the crowd and the noise of the traffic is saying "This can't last - do something different." We're sleeping, just waiting to awake.