Flashbulb Memories
A Snapshot From What May Be The Best Years Of My Life
“Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
Give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah”
— Kodachrome, Paul Simon
“But in the stillness of the moment it takes for a Polaroid picture
To capture our faces forever and
The world has turned a touch on its axis
And the only thing certain is
That everything changes
So honey I just need a little time
To take a little time today
To save all the triumphs and tragedies
Before they slip away”
— Polaroid Picture, Frank Turner
“It’ll be fine, dude,” the stranger said to me. “Buy a Polaroid camera.”
The injunction struck me as a bit of a non sequitur:
I had been fretting for a while that the contract ratification party to be held by my union wouldn’t go well. I didn’t have any particular reason to think it would go badly–in fact it seemed to me very likely it would be oodles of fun–but I had nonetheless been very concerned about the possibility it would be a dud because of how committed I was to the hope of a smooth, jolly time.
Now, here I was at a bar with all my colleagues squandering the occasion by being overly stressed.
To be told I could relax and everything was fine seemed straightforward enough.
But, what the hell was that about the camera?
And who was this guy anyway?
This was a private party and I didn’t recognize this Polaroid pitchman.
He’d just materialized at my side…
That’s when I woke up.
I realized I’d been having a combination stress dream and infomercial. That was kind of distressing itself, but on balance I was more glad that I still had time before the party.
Mulling it over, I decided to see what instant cameras were available at my local Target.
I’d been thinking about getting a camera for a long time. Since childhood I’ve had a loose fascination with cameras.
When I was very little–inspired by Spiderman’s day job as a news photographer–I’d convinced my parents to buy a few cameras from thrift stores, but I’d usually had no film and when I did I’d always failed to produce any pictures. (I’m not sure if this was because the cameras had been donated as defective to begin with or because I had handled them incompetently. I also did something similar with typewriters with worn out ink ribbons, to comparable results).
As I grew older I’d gotten very interested in becoming a filmmaker and started coveting cameras for that purpose. But, I never saved enough money away for a worthwhile instrument and just made use of video cameras available through my college and grad school. In any case, by a series of happy quirks I pursued journalism instead, so it was easy to table the issue of buying my own for a time.
But, of late the idea of buying a camera had started to obtrude into my thoughts with greater force and immediacy.
I think it was for two related but distinct reasons:
The first is that I suspect I’m living the best years of my life.
The second is I’m experiencing a new and more adult kind of détente with the fact that one day I’ll die.
I think the symbolic launch pad for both was my friend Nathaniel’s wedding last year.
At one point I was casually shuffling through the old photos Nate and Meg had chosen to decorate the wedding ceremony and, stopping on one taken just after we’d graduated High School, I was shocked by the soft perfection of our skin, the lively, raw-boned youth of those familiar faces.
I felt all the intervening years approach in series, collapsing with recognition behind me, like stopping freight cars pressing close with their last momentum against the engine freshly at rest in the station. The unknown end seemed somehow to telescope towards me as well, its depth transforming vertiginously like a Hitchcock shot.
It wasn’t scary, but it was sobering.
There is so much to do and to savor and so precious little time for the serious work of doing it.
And I can now recall from experience a length of time long enough that if I lived it again I’d be most of the way to the end of a conservative estimate of my whole life.
All of that was captured by those photos in a way that was, to me, remarkable.
In addition to setting that particular marble of mine about dying rolling more concertedly, that wedding was the capstone of what I think I’ll remember as the first of those best years I mentioned. 2023 had its share of grief, to be sure–most importantly one of my close friends, an old man, died and in addition to officiating Nathan’s wedding I had to spread some of this friend’s ashes while I was in town–but so much more joy was consummated that the pain seemed only to lend poignance to what I had to celebrate.
I had old and robust friendships; I was feeling secure that I would be able to stay indefinitely in the city I love best; I was living in an attractive apartment block with its own organic and supportive tenants’ community; a few minutes walk from my home was a glimpse of the New Jersey Palisades I earnestly consider the most beautiful view I have yet had on earth (especially in fall); I’d been promoted to reporter in my newsroom; that promotion was itself only a new and important development enhancing the fact that I was already making a living in a field, journalism, which I take to be not just a career but my calling; and as an externality of my promotion I had a new and extremely considerate manager and was making more money.
This meant I was not only the most solvent and safe I think I’ve ever been in an economic sense, but I was at sudden liberty to travel farther and more often. It had given me the privilege to see Germany and France (and very briefly Switzerland) and after Nathan’s wedding it enabled me to visit Japan too.
(I pause briefly to mention that all these things remain true despite my use of the past tense, and I’ve since seen Italy and India to boot, but this was the combination of good fortune that was new in 2023).
And, as the centerpiece, I was spending two months with my two oldest friends from back home and had the honor of performing the wedding ceremony for one of them.
I can’t tell you how I treasure weddings–the cheer, the spectacle, the high purpose, the sense of maturing, the feeling of savoring and deepening intimacies, the earnest directness with which these things are addressed–and here was my chance to contribute to Nathan’s.
I’m glad to say it lived up to its potential.
I’d had one of the worst years of my life in 2022 in terms of raw unhappiness and then 2023 had come along and all this happened to me. Everything seemed to have changed in my favor.
2024 continued the trend, and, as I’ve written before, my increasing participation in my union across these last two years fundamentally shifted my view of life in the direction of hope.
I’ve told some friends that as far back as I could remember I’d had a meta-sadness that pervaded and distorted my experiences, both good and bad. There is a phenomena called Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation: left over radiation from the Big Bang present throughout the universe. I’ve thought of this meta-sadness of mine as sort of like the CMBR of my emotional universe; a spectrum of sorrow seemingly extending back to the origin of my conscious memory and infused into all its contents, rendering the lows a kind of despair and tainting the highs as inescapably insignificant and brief. But, on two occasions I can name I’ve felt certain bands of this radiation evaporate and not return, contracting the spectrum.
The first was a long talk near the end of High School with those two old friends of mine in a little garage or storage unit during which they finally managed to drill into my head the permanence of our bonds. The other has been the cumulative effect of my experiences these last two years.
Both have been in a certain sense inexplicable, with me able to gesture at but not fully explain why things finally “clicked” in those moments, but both have also been undeniable and life changing.
I think this second, while unable to eradicate grief entirely, has perhaps finally made it the exception and not the rule of how I feel. My unhappiness, when it comes, now seems the thing not long to last and small by comparison. I hope it stays that way and I feel, for reasons I can’t fully articulate, convinced it will.
At the risk of stretching your patience and belief too far let me say that I really feel that I have entered upon the second act of my life. Where the first was largely dictated by anger, unhappiness, pessimism and contempt, I think this next is going to be about love, gratitude, optimism, joy and compassion.
That is why I say I think I’m embarked on the best years of my life.
I’ve heard it said you can’t know when they are upon you, and maybe so, but I think I’ve made a strong guess: I have all these external things I’ve named above on my side, this newfound disposition, and, for the time being, my health, my youth, and almost all of those people whom I’ve loved most in life so far.
Ahead of me stretch my 30s. I am excited to greet them.
Some people prize their 20s as the ultimate moment of glory, but it’s the next ten years that have always held the most promise in my eyes. I’m told most people get their major milestones out of the way before they hit The Big Three-Oh, but I’ve usually imagined I’ll meet the love of my life and marry in my thirties, obtain the jobs I most want during that ten year window, look my best and have my greatest adventures once they’ve begun.
To me, I have the decade of consolidation and capitalization to look forward to starting in March and I’ve never felt more prepared to rise to an occasion. Even those things ahead of us that give me gravest pause right now strike me as something to be met as challenges of greater consequence and richer reward in proportion to their seriousness.
In combination with that maturing sense of my own mortality, these things have made me more sentimental and desirous of some documentation of the way we are now. I’ve felt doubly inclined to start recording events as I’ve come to believe the best is beginning.
Which brings me back to cameras.
Over the years, I’ve found myself especially taken with instant cameras. I’m both impatient and neurotic in a way that makes them ideal–get your picture quick, but avoid fussing over multiple shots in the vain hope of the perfect photo because the constraints of limited film force you to reconcile yourself to an early result. And, having enjoyed the elaborate whirring and buzzing of the little mechanism, you have this lovely memento, pleasant to hold and charming in its obsolescence.
Whenever someone has brought a Polaroid camera to a party I’ve been totally enamored with it and several photos of this kind have made their way over the years onto a small altar I keep of trinkets that remind me of my friends.
And before the ratification party about which I’d been so stressed, I’d enviously observed a coworker wielding an instant camera at an earlier union get-together.
So, when I had that weird dream-cum-advertisement, I’d decided it was probably time I finally made my purchase.
Stopping by Target I found, in a nice piece of serendipity, that they were selling a Polaroid that normally cost around $140 for about $40. I snapped it up and spent the difference buying film.
Not long after, I descended on the ratification party with the new gear. The bash itself ended up being one of the most enjoyable parties I’ve ever attended and the camera was well received. I keep several photos from that night on the shelf I use to memorialize my friendships and find renewed satisfaction each time I reexamine them. (Additionally, I’ve brought it out for a few other occasions and I was told recently someone I photographed at another party has kept the picture with her and it acts as a totem of hope for the next phase of her own life.)
A friend once told me about an interview he’d heard, I think with Steve Martin, in which the subject had said something like, “Of course we were beautiful: we were young.”
I look around me and see friends off whom talent, charm and beauty roll like mist from dry ice; I want to save some small portion of it to remember.
I see irreplaceable family whose uniqueness it would be a crime not to capture.
I look in the mirror and see a man I am lucky and glad to be. I think I should like one day to be surprised again at how young he was just now, to have occasion to remember all the intervening years.
I would like to be able to hold in my hand a few fixed seconds of these best years of mine, because I know as quickly as they’ve come they will have to go. I face life now with a conviction of hope and a predominant gladness, but each of these precious moments is nonetheless passing. Even with the promise of many good years before me and a suspicion that I shall have more to be grateful for than to regret, I think it is wise to save some of these things for lean times nearer the end than the start.
One day, the good things, even if they greatly outweigh the bad, will be largely behind me. And though they may prove very long lived, I expect I shall find in time that I should have liked them to go on a bit longer still.
To that end, I preserve a few of them in these photos, like pressed flowers, to bear with me when I need them most.
In the end, this camera is only so good as the things it captures. It relies for the pleasure derived on my living a good life to begin with. But, as I approach a New Year and a new decade, I can say confidently it is a good life and so this mechanical gimmick has been able to reflect to me joys and blessings.
And, though I expect this is only their beginning, I am glad to record them as they come.
You know the old punchline: “Take a picture–it’ll last longer.”
–30–
Copyright
Emlyn Alastair Gordon Cameron
2024