On Being Present
Lately I have not been much of a photographer, at least not in the way I wish to be. The cameras sit ready, but the days slip past with their usual freight of errands and obligations. I keep hoping that will change.
This entry is thin on pictures, and the few it has are nothing anyone would call remarkable. They are not grand or carefully staged. They are simply small proofs that a certain place and a certain moment existed. One of them, though, has my heart.
Most of my life arrives as a blur: stress, noise, and big projects that all swear they are urgent. My head fills with things that need doing, and in the process I misplace entire weeks. I look up from one task and find that time has marched on without leaving much in the way of memory.
Photographs are the exception. What I photograph, I remember. I can call up the frame in my mind later and with it the air, the mood, the way the day felt. It is not unlike the way music can wake old memories in those who have begun to forget. My brain seems wired that way for pictures.
I will remember this afternoon with my youngest son, for example. We stood in the yard, scooping up armfuls of leaves and raining them down on him. He burrowed into the pile, giggling as the autumn color fell on his head. There was no agenda, no schedule, just a boy being a boy, perfectly at home in the present. I will remember that laugh, that little face peeking through the leaves, and the photograph that proves it really happened.
I am a soft touch for worn-out places and old signs, like the one in Price, Utah. On that day a snowstorm was moving in, and for about ten minutes a warm, golden light slipped through the clouds as if it had been granted a short reprieve. It fell on the sign in just the right way. Years from now I will remember that corner and that brief spell of light, though I could not tell you what I was doing the week before or the week after. Perhaps that is the problem…too much noise, too much work that does not quite line up with where my heart lives.
Another place that tugs at me is Huntsville, Utah; a small town growing faster than seems polite. I keep hoping it won’t lose its soul as the valley fills with new houses in various stages of becoming. When I have the time, you can sometimes find me there in the early morning, driving slowly through the streets, hunting for light the way some people hunt for bargains. I stop when something feels right, step out, and make a picture.
There is a shed there, with a flag and a bench, that I photographed one quiet morning. A pocket of light was resting on it just so, and there was a sense of peace that is hard to come by these days. I know that years from now I will remember that shed, that flag, that bench, and the calm of that particular morning. When I drive past, I will see again how the light touched it. Yet the rest of that week is mostly lost to me. When I don’t give a moment any real attention, my mind doesn’t bother to make a deposit. Perhaps that is mercy. Perhaps it is waste.
What I know is this: being present is what’s missing, too often in my life and, I suspect, in most lives. The camera, when I let it, pulls me back into the moment. It asks me to look up, to notice, and to remember.
