.8 capture

a cool summers evening
the foot of the mountain
the crowd swirls at an outdoor gig.

the band
the noise
the jumping
and shouting
and laughter.

the atmosphere pulsing.

i watch from up on the bank
as suddenly one mosher
pauses,
reaching for his pocket
his movement
stilted,
breaking the rhythm of the moment.
he holds the device up towards the stage.

*click.

then,
frantic and desperate,
clings onto memory
and attempts to regain what is lost
by rejoining the journeying sway of the crowd.



another time,
home,
food,
a family gathering;
presents shared.

unwrap
surprise
delight
astonish
the face
the smile-

joyful gratitude.

but wait. stop. hold it there. no, go back. move in a little closer. brush that hair away from your face, dear. that's it. now all of you, smile.

*click

the passion ceased.
the naturality, the organic flow of one reaction playing off the next
obliterated.



so, for a third,
im walking down the broadway,
bright sunshine again,
a young family.

proud,
gleeful
parents.

their daughter
stepping out,
her first ice cream in hand.
reaching
grasping
cherishing the attention,

learning the only way she knows how.
experience; enouragement.

the father already positioning
his hands fumbling with lenses and views and flashes and modes,
looks at his child through a thousand panes of glass.

*click

shame,
i think.



life is about movement, right?
about change,
about transition,
about direction.
not about the same.

i suppose it's about
changing
the same.

lots of different
sames,
each one being different from the last.


fair enough, i get the whole, camera, photo, album, recording, video and memory and art and snapshot and timeframe thing. we would be far worse off without them (...i think..?)

not to mention, i occasionally ponder that, wow, now if only i could
capture
that sight, that view i just had, momentarily, if somehow, i had cameras for eyes and could freeze each millisecond and...

twisted, huh?


but, i mean, isn't it also blatantly obvious that for each same that you
*click
to record in timelessness,
you miss many other sames as they pass you by,
each different?

(unless, of course, you count those alternative sames that you experience while recording the important same as significant in themselves,
which,
i guess they are,
though arguably not of the same intrigue as the other sames around you that you missed).


and,
beyond that,
i really despise the
theft
of the reality
by the *click
for history's sake.

the fan at the gig pausing his sensation.
the family frivolity sliced by the pose.
the father denying himself barrierless observation and his daughter, the face on which she seeks adoration.

please,
please,
ask yourself:

is it really a priceless treasure i am sealing,
or is it actually yet another cateract which will mar my pleasure of the moment?



and so,
we find ourselves pouring over
gaping
and staring
our hearts transfixed
by little more than ink on a page
or lights on a screen.

our memories
recollections
thoughts
become ambushed by these motionless pictures,
these soulless images
that ignore the beneath,
restating our obsession with the aesthetic,
the look,
and casting our opinions of their being,
their who and what and why
further back.

bloody hell, just fall in love with their cardboard cut-out, why don't you.


what's more,
each's uniqueness
stolen.

the curvature of the cheekbones,
the grin,
the wispy hair,
constrained by pixels and printered dots.

personally, i don't care what they say about every curve being made up of straight lines and whatnot.
if you ask me,
i'd say
that instead
every straight line is made up of myriad curvy ones, no doubt. (have you ever tried sketching one?)

and outrightly,
i
refuse
to believe
that this world as we see it, in reality, is constructed of tiny little squares too hard to notice. pixels may be a fabrication of our highly flawed mechanism for portraying stuff, but,
eyes don't do pixels.
eyes do reality.



surely,
there is nothing better,
than the presence
of an actual,
real,
person.