"The Charm of Memory"
8 December, 2000
"The charm, one might say the genius of
memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects
the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy
outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust."
--Elizabeth Bowen
I've been toying with a re-design of this website for a while--partly because I was tired of the old design, but also because I've been feeling a need to shift the focus of the site. I hadn't gotten so far as to actually try any designs. It was just something I was thinking about.
And then I was reading Julie's journal site and she had a new link to an on-line journal directory page that keeps statistics on how many people surf from each journal to the directory, which effects the ranking of each journal. It's purely a vanity thing, but I noticed that many of journals on the list had banners the author had designed to represent the journal.
The next thing I knew, I was playing around with some of the images from my on-line photo album, designing a banner for my site. I wasn't sure I would ever use it, but I thought it was a fun exercise in image manipulation. It wasn't long until I was playing with just one image, though. One of the oldest photographs I own of myself. It was taken during the summer before my fourth birthday.
Here's the picture. In case
you can't guess, I'm the kid sitting on the hood and that's my
dad leaning against the car. My mom took this picture. We were
living in Eastern Colorado at the time. I've been told that we
had driven out to a ranch owned by my Dad's employer to take
care of some chore my Dad had agreed to do. Later that day I
got to ride one of the horses. I think my Mom has a picture of
me on the horse.
Mom doesn't remember just why we posed for this particular picture. But there we are. The car was a Ford Fairlane. The dark parts were candy-apple red. The lighter colored stipe between the white and the red was pink. My Dad had a real thing for red cars.
To create the logos I've been using on these design tests this week, I cropped the picture down to include just me. Then I extended the image past the frame of the original, creating a false image of the landscape. I realized midway through the exercise that it was sort of symbolic of what I do here on this site with the events from my life. Instead of listing what happens from day to day, I focus on what I think about; how the events effect me, not what the events are. And I go outside the frame, filling in the missing bits or connections between events.
Several years ago, when my department at work was responsible for hosting the monthly employee birthday party, we sponsored a "who's that toddler?" contest. We asked employees to bring in a toddler picture of themselves (two years earlier we had done baby pictures). We posted all of them on the wall at the party, and handed each person who came in a list of names. We gave out prizes to the three people who correctly matched the employee name to the photo.
This is the picture I brought in. At one point during the party I was standing next to two co-workers who were discussing the pictures. One pointed to my picture and said, "How can anyone guess who that is? I mean, that's the most generic little kid I've ever seen."
He must have been
on to something. Almost no one correctly identified me. Two co-workers
did. When I talked to them about it later, it turns out both
had done it the same way. They recognized my Dad. Neither had
ever met Dad in person, but they had seen recent photos I had
of him on my desk, and they remembered that I bore a strong resemblance
to him. The actual photo is higher resolution than a web graphic,
so it's a little easier to make out his face when looking at
the original.
I just noticed when I inserted this segment of the photo into the page that he's got bandages on his hands. I remember there was an incident at work where Dad's hands were severely burned and he couldn't work for a while. Apparently this outing happened during that time.
I was trying to find
some photos of me at age 21. The closest I could find was this
one, when I was 19 years old. Before you laugh at the hair, remember,
this was the 70s, okay? I'm not sure how much of the resemblance
to Dad comes through on this one. By the way, those aren't sunglasses,
those were my prescription lenses. As I said, it was the 70s...
Memory is a strange beast. There are scenes from my early childhood that I remember with crystal clarity, including some that happened when I was even younger than I am in the old picture up above. But I don't have any memories of this day at the ranch with my folks. I remember many conversations over the years when my Mom would be showing someone this photo and would talk about the day. But the day itself is lost to me.
Similarly with this picture taken when I was 19. I remember all sorts of things from that year. I was a freshman in college. I became the stage manager and head technician for the Lower Columbia Singers that year. I kissed my first red-head (a sailor stationed in Puerto Rico, in case you're curious) just a few months before this picture was taken. I remember giving a copy of this picture to the wife of the youth pastor at our church about a month after it was taken. She had hated my beard, refering to me as "El Diablo" every time she saw me, so I wanted her to have a momento of it after I shaved it off. But I don't remember why we took this picture. Perhaps this was the night I shaved the beard off, I just don't remember.
Maybe it doesn't matter. The photos remind us that things change. What was important to us years ago sometimes bears little relevance to our present. They become charming icons that represent our sense of history, instead of the history itself.