Photos & Memories — #3

"Tears From The Compound Eye" - Boards of Canada (2005)

As I get closer to leaving my hometown—and my country—the realization of my finite time I have left here set in. A lot of time sitting around doing nothing but watching. I wander this town, trying to observe it from every space possible—I want to make sure I see it all. If that's an empty alley behind a glasses store, a parking lot I've walked past for 26 years but never went into, or a small side street I have no reason to use... I want to see it.

In this time since I've come to this realization, I've had a lot of life changes happening too. One of the biggest was the passing of my paternal grandmother. Two pictures in this album are my final snapshots of her house, which I spent almost every weekend in when growing up—taken as I finished cleaning it out and said my final goodbyes to that chapter of my life. I said my goodbyes to her years before she passed away—when she couldn't remember who I was anymore, even as she walked me to the creek by her house which I swam in every summer. She only knew what was going on because of how we would go there together. Her heart guided her there without her realizing it.

Another few photographs are when I returned to the playground attached to my elementary school, which I attended from 2004 to 2010. There are a couple small mounds on this playground I remember playing with my friend and laying on often. We'd pretend to be Mario and Luigi—going on tons of adventures. I once made custom hats for us—blank trucker hats with marker M & L symbols, but I digress. I've been coming back to sit on that same mound, now 20 years later. To ground myself. I watch the world go by, and think. Sometimes I play my iPod whilst I lay there—the same iPod I had on that playground oh-so long ago.

The rest are just moments in time where I felt like taking a picture. See the world as I saw it in that moment—but you won't be able to feel what I was feeling. Understandably, I don't think even I can remember what I was feeling either.

These touchstones of my life—views and objects I've walked and driven past hold those feelings, emotions, and moments which only recall upon seeing or feeling them once again. Even something as pathetic as an outdated Pepsi vending machine which has sat outside a car wash behind my elementary school— or as personal as that creek I swam in every summer at my grandmother's, or the mountains that have watched over me as I grew up—the dirt patch atop the playground mound I spent every recess upon. Unchanged. They hold enough value to remind me that I existed. I was here, once.