the thousand words

I didn't take a single picture while I was at camp this year. for two weeks of my life, my camera - frantically charged and packed before departing st louis - lived in my purse, on my dresser, in my room, in seay.

my old camp self would have been undeniably upset about this. how else would I remember these people? how else would I document how cute he was or how dirty we got or how silly they could be?!

the most important answer to this question, early-aughts self, is that going to camp with the anxiety of a new position, after a summer off and two years of pushing away, and many years after most of the people with whom I'd formed cliques had stopped coming back was bad enough. I didn't even send in my final confirmation for attending until a month before I was set to go, because I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to face it. but bringing the camera out and reclaiming my space as the photographic soccer mom of the group felt like too much. my kids are staff; my friends are gone. I was ready to fade into the background.

sure, I can make lighter excuses: my memory card is still full of pictures from 2007 (sad truth); my camera still acts up as a result of my photo shoot with lodge and the powerwasher in 2006; I'm too old for pictures; I'll just get them from everyone else once they're posted on facebook; etc.

but in actuality, after I realized that this lack of shuttering was happening, my only answer was that I needed to rely solely on my memory. I surmised that such a thing would allow me to remember the week only as I saw it. if I didn't make a single new friend, only I would know. if I loved every minute of it, only I would know. being absolutely in the present at each moment was the easiest way for me to realize such things. and so I justified it this way: that every second I spent posing for a picture or pressing a button was another second I spent somewhere in the past or the future, instead of in the moment that was happening.

it was very freeing.

***

I used to think that pictures did the work of forming such a memory. until I realized that sometimes pictures make no sense in as little as days after they've been taken, and that my most vivid memories are just outside of the pictures I've taken at those moments:

whole rolls were used in glen arbor on those debaucherous post-conference trips to the lake; one moment of life spent riding directly into the wind and sun on the boat of a guy whose face I'll never remember stays with me more.

unnecessary amounts of money and stress were spent trying to develop pictures after high school football games or dances, just so I could dully relive those moments, but I would rather remember the feeling of safety in glenn's giant old car than shuffle through all of that.

years of playing a game of "what was I doing at this time last week/month/year" in my head always brings me back to being a 16-year-old, dozing on a beach in florida, but you'll never see a picture of that moment.

fry's entire puppyhood is captured and catalogued digitally, though the conversations I had with him while we took two hour walks through a dark, wintry south st louis are so much better.

I could go on...

***

I asked a new friend at one point last week if he could distinctly tell in his head when he was forming a true memory. I meant to ask if he could tell the difference between moments captured on film and moments captured with his whole being. I know I didn't verbalize this question well enough (nor did I ask it at a time conducive to having a solid conversation about it), so it was sort of dropped... but I still wonder: is it just me, or do other people know when they're experiencing a moment they'll remember forever? can they recognize those moments of presence where they live until the next moment, and do they know that everything else - including all of the pictures they can't wait to post in oh-so-many places - is filler? that nothing else matters, save that moment of relief known as right now?

***

I recognize now that most of my anxiety stems from being too positively or negatively attached to moments - often including the pictorial representation thereof - and that I consequently miss out on being fully present in them. ironically, my favorite moment of anxiety is not only one of my favorite moments of presence, but also one that was captured on film by my mom. I was sixteen, sitting on a beach in petoskey, dreading going to camp for the first time.

[picture to be inserted soon enough]

I can remember how it felt to sit on those rocks, in those short shorts, the humidity heavy in the air; the barrage of thoughts I was having about missing another week of summer socializing, about not making any friends, about not fitting in, about not knowing what I was doing or why I was going.

sounds familiar, right?

and while I ended up documenting the hell out of most of my weeks at camp, including that dreaded first one, I survived the first two weeks in august this year without a single shot. I was just there. I was just an observer. I was just taking it all in, and making the present moment happen. that's all I needed. and no picture will ever compare to that.