Blog 12: Photograph

This is a polaroid print picture. The light in the photo is amber and gives off a retro hue. We are two girls, not women, but girls. We are standing in the corner of a room with busy wallpaper to our backs. It has blue and white vertical lines that are behind us with a flower lining that circumferences the rest of the room. On the other side of the picture is a sliding glass door.

We both have a sly smile on our faces as if we are up to no good--vixens on the lose. We are also both wearing red and standing close to one another; it seems as if we are one being. She is facing the picture and I am standing sideways. We both have only one arm showing, although my other hand peeks out and is holding an ashtray. Her arm is straight; mine is curved at a 90 degree angle. Her arm is bare; mine is full of bracelets. Her shirt is 3/4 sleeved and v-necked; mine is a tank top, sparkly, and comes above my midsection. Her neck is bare; I have a thick black-studded necklace on.

We both have blonde hair, yet hers is darker. She has hers cut short and pulled back by a thick black headband. Mine is bleached blonde, medium length, and pulled into two pigtails (although you can only see one.) Her head is cocked to the side and she looks fatigued. I am looking straight at the camera and have a devious look on my face.

This is a picture of my best friend and I from 2000. We were at her house at the time, hanging out with some friends as well as random people. We might have been drinking. We were acting very silly and were very young. This was taken at the end of the night by some one who was there and given to us as a gift for inviting them to the party.

Impermanence

This weekend was a difficult. My grandfather is losing his integrity in the hospital after having five strokes over the years. He can't walk, can't speak. Last week may have been the last one. I am losing my concentration.

I am supposed to be studying for a midterm but instead of doing the intended and important, I distract myself with some wandering.

My mother asked me to hang some laundry--which connects to the essay we read--so I am thrown to the dungeon of my house for some laundry time. I took that as an opportunity to search the bottom of the dusty realms of my parents clutter.

I was magnetically attracted to the forlorn and neglected chest that used to inhabit our family room upstairs. I missed it. It now lives in the corner of the musty basement with useless junk atop it: a blue basket full of videos not watched anymore, clothes from the 80's, and a newspaper from 1992. The poor chest; it is sorely neglected, now banished to the Island of Shame or the Outsiders Realm; it yearns affection.

It is not necessarily beautiful, nor does it have personality. It is a plain dark pine box shaped as a rectangle; almost like a child's coffin. My brother used to hide in it during hide and seek. I take all the meaningless junk on top of the chest and scatter it around me in a circle of protection. It is my ritual for I am bringing up remains of the dead.

I am so excited; the smell of decay and rotten centipedes wafts into my nostrils giving off a light-headed yet familiar scent.

The laundry has become an enigma, a nomadic force, an alternative life.

I open the case and I am a child again; slowly becoming thirteen, ten, eight, six.

My mother, my sister, my father, my brother are all folded neatly in this box like a crayola crayons.

I find my parents old records; the ones that I used to spread on the floor with me as a child and learn about music with; Michael Jackson, Santana, The Beatles. I fell in love with Michael Jackson sprawled on his animal fur while he sang Billie Jean to me. I found my brother Ghost Buster's collection and my barbie collection and remembered our fights. My sister had saved all her notebooks from high school. I found dust.

It made me think of life and our impermanence. Prior that chest was living with us in the nexus of our household and was now stuffed in the musty corner of the dirty basement.

This morning my mother told me that my grandfather handcrafted that chest himself. Now it is stuffed in the corner with collected dust and junk atop it. It made me think of life.