She photographs because she wants to hold still what is fleeting – an angle, a pose, an age, a smile, a moment in time – before it dissolves, fades, evaporates into reality.
But what she doesn’t photograph matters too.
She didn’t photograph the sky turning red from a hundred bushfires, or the water lapping at the laundry door. She didn’t photograph the washing line, snaking down the backyard, heavy under the weight of the weekly wash, or the heat from the wood stove in the kitchen. She didn’t photograph the hospital bracelet crumpled in the bottom of the bag, or the small fist clutching a handful of her mother’s hair.
She didn’t photograph the look exchanged before the first word of bad news, or the sigh that followed.
She didn’t photograph the relief in the hospital corridor after the surgeon said it went well, the ordinary dinners that kept them alive through ‘that’ time, the thousand mornings where nothing “happened” except that she woke up, or her fumbling attempts at dancing that looked more like jelly caught on a string.
Sometimes she wants proof that it really happened the way she thinks it did. That the sky really was pea soup green, that the drummer really did smile at her.
Maybe it’s better this way. No evidence, no proof. A series of memories, more absurd and exaggerated each time she recalls them – never sure which details are real and which are imagined.
Or which she simply longs for.
Musings from the cold 