I just spent an hour looking through the pictures on my computer. You know, the ones that are in random folders that you never really look at until one day you do? Sometimes I like to torture myself. I saw a 15-year old girl at Brandeis for a summer, flirting with all the boys and learning how to do her own laundry. I saw an insecure freshman in high school, trying her best to look like she has many friends, and an over-confident senior, ecstatic in the knowledge that she's found a few real ones, yet terrified of losing them. I saw a 19 year old birthday girl, getting drunk with her best friends by pretending to be 21, and getting hit on by the guy she couldn't yet have. I saw a 21 year old, having a beer with her brother. I saw a room, a bed, a living room, a kitchen, an apartment up on 77th and Lex that's empty and full at the same time. I saw a college student, out at parties in skimpy outfits, acting in plays and dressing up for Halloween and trying to be everyone she thought she should be at any given moment, posing for photos she hopes beyond hope will end up tagged on Facebook so that everyone can know how social she is. I saw a world traveler, standing before monuments and vistas and statues, loving the freedom but missing home. I saw a girlfriend, hugging and cuddling and kissing the boy she loves, staring at him with eyes full of adoration and admiration and hope.
I saw family. Parents, siblings, cousins. A baby niece dancing at a bar mitzvah. Family at a graduation, family at a baseball game, family on vacation. Family saying goodbye and 'till we meet again.
Sunsets. Mountains. Deserts. Buildings. Beaches. Classrooms. Airports...
Hands, eyes, blurry backgrounds and foregrounds. Pictures that were taken too quickly or not quickly enough, pictures that scream out, "look how incredible this was!" and pictures that should never have been taken in the first place. Pictures on airplanes and in between sheets, pictures in bathing suits and bridesmaid dresses. In Israel and Poland and Brooklyn and Ireland and Las Vegas and Amsterdam and Rhode Island and Venice and Maryland and Queens and Seattle and Great Neck and the Bahamas and all over Manhattan.
Memories and moments that exist now only as pixilated realities, blobs of color that from far away look like something real, but up close become meaningless dots, desperate to become something more, something physical, something still happening, or if not that, then at least printed onto something tangible. Something that can wear around the edges in an album that grandchildren shuffle through every so often to see what grandma was like when she was their age.
Make me real they beg. Come back, come back, come back. Come back to elementary school and high school and college; come back to this one and that one and this one, last, real love. Come back to last year and last summer and that one last week one last dinner one last kiss. One last click, and they're gone.
So now here I am, living and breathing and three-dimensional, and the pictures are still being taken. They're still getting tagged on Facebook and posted in blogs, still getting stuffed into folders and hidden away until I can go through this all over again in months or years from now. Will I miss these days in quite the same way? Or have I entered some kind of new phase when it all just starts blurring together? Man, it hurts. I sometimes want so badly to just rewind time, and I'm still so young. What happens in 10, 20, 50 years from now? Will it hurt even more? Who am I to miss being younger, when I'm only still just a child myself? I want to live in the moment, but moments pass instantly and then all you end up doing is chasing after the newest ones, trying your best to keep up. I want to live for now, and for my future, but can't I also live for my past sometimes, without feeling like I might fall apart?
It's strange, it's not like I wish I were somewhere else, or someone else, or even someone who I used to be. I just wish I could be everything at once. I wish I could be me now, and me then, and me tomorrow and next year. I want everyone I know and everyone I love and every time I smiled and every place I danced and every dream I chased and every epiphany and growth and trip and experience to be right now and right here. Not like in the Lion King, not living in me. Living with me. Just plain living.
I keep learning here that thought influences emotion. I'm literally sitting in a class right now, and the teacher just said: "The way we think determines the way we feel. Or at least, it should." They tell me to use my mind to challenge my perceptions of reality, to reevaluate and reconsider what I see, what I feel. That what makes us human is our ability to choose, to be active participants in our own lives rather than passive reactors to instinct or environment. That a feeling of sadness or jealousy or hatred, or happiness or thankfulness or love, comes from someplace more sophisticated, someplace worth examining further than the depths of a tissue box. That the greatest type of discovery is that of self. So what about yearning? This tangible pull that sucks me towards these photographs, towards the realities they represent? How do I analyze this one, this gut feeling, this nagging, this wrenching? Should it mean something more to me? Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough. Maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe I'll only find out when I'm old enough to really appreciate the lesson. Either way, sometimes it's nice to let my mind take a vacation; I kind of like swimming around in my heart. It makes for good blog entries.
Oh, well. I guess part of growing up is realizing you can't go backwards, so you may as well start facing forward instead. I guess I'm still growing up.
Love, Shira
PS Sorry for the kind of melancholy tone to this one. Sometimes, you just have one of those days. It's kind of funny how as I'm writing this, all about sadness over change, America is choosing its next president who, presumably, wants to change things in big ways. By the time I wake up tomorrow morning, it'll be a whole new ball game, a new era for America and the world, or so we hope. Those predictor sites say it'll be Obama. Cool. I just hope that whoever wins can inspire the country to grow up a bit. Might be too much to ask. In the end, whoever wins, I think it's up to each individual to make their own decisions, to choose to be happy, to choose to use their circumstances for the good, to not waste their time and energy chasing after things that won't make them better and more fulfilled people, to choose the right paths for themselves and their families and their children. As a collective we choose our leaders, but as individuals we choose the outcome of our own lives in a much bigger way, I think. Eh, what do I know. I'm just a kid. Staring at digital photos. Wishing away.
PPS I didn't manage to get online last night, so now it's the next day, and Obama has indeed lambasted McCain for the win. I'm so proud of America right now. Not just that they picked him -since to be honest, you never really know what will happen, no matter who you put in office - but that they managed to actually pick someone at all. This kind of a landslide victory is an unequivocal decision, one that the country can take credit for if things go well, as well as the blame if things go badly. I still stand by what I said in the PS, that it's up to each individual to determine their own lives. But I think that an election like this one is an indication that people are in the mood to take charge and make things happen, which can only be a good thing. Obama's got a lot of work to do, and he keeps talking about change this, change that, but it takes more than one inspiring figure to create real change. He can get us going, get us excited about it, but it takes the efforts of everyone, in small and in big ways, each one working towards a better life for themselves, and a better world overall. Of course, in order to work for change, you have to first have some idea what kind of a change you want. Maybe that first step needs some more attention. Change: from what? To what? Hopefully we can each figure that out for ourselves, before we make too many more mistakes.
PPPS It has to be said: this whole post was about discomfort over change, in my personal life, in my photos, etc. Then I went off in the PSs about the importance of figuring out what kind of change we want in the world so we can make it happen. Clearly there's a difference, but like I've tried to explain, I think there's also a connection. And I think they go hand in hand: effect change, personally, globally, whatever, but keep that slight discomfort at the same time, that caution. That way, maybe we can keep ourselves in check, as individuals and as members of society. Just a thought.
PPPPS A post-disclaimer: I am entirely unqualified to give advice on anything personal or political, so feel free to disregard everything I said in these PSs if you think it's all silliness. I'm just rambling, after all. I can do that. 'Cuz it's my blog.
PPPPPS Sorry, just one more. Can I just say: Go Obama!!! Israelis aren't so into him so I can't act too excited out loud here. And I'm not one of those Obamania people who kisses the ground he walks on, either. But yeah. I like the guy. I think he has a good heart. I hope he does well and proves all the haters wrong. I hope the country prospers, that he fulfills his promises, that he remembers the needy and the uninsured, that he helps us believe in a better future as well as achieve it, and that he is good to Israel. Amen, Amen, Amen.
