Starting Over

I look at old photos and have no idea who those people are.

We were rosy cheeked and stupid, full of enthusiasm, but little else. It's the curse of getting older I think, to see oneself through a retro-microscope, a vision without charm and promise, just the bugs, the pieces of hair and filth caught in film, that no one saw til prints were made. Oh look, there we are standing on a mountain top, with a huge piece of lint, instead of a view. Who knew?

The parts that don't seem to matter at the time tell the whole story. It is in the discard, the refuge, the garbage that explains us. Not what we keep, but what we throw away. A playwright once told me that in a play, what isn't said is much more important than what is. We show our true character in what we don't do, what we don't say.

I am ready to move on, to put the pictures away and know that the albums can exist, can sit upon a shelf forever, long after we have stopped posing.