I didn’t see a last picture, not in some time. The last one of those I saw was one…I now do not remember what.
This week, Linda at
Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS
says to write about the last picture we see before writing.
I once loved to pour over photo albums of my mother or grandmother’s. My mom on her wedding day, the photos of my grandparent’s younger selves, or my own photo, smiling wide, in grade eight graduation gown.
Now I see so little that pictures don’t appear to me, not anywhere near clearly, unless they are shifting images I hold onto in my own wandering mind.
There’s a name for it, I believe but am too tired to look it up for this stream of consciousness writing moment, but I still see images in my own head. My mind hasn’t totally forgotten. My brain and those connections still fire off and hope to produce something tangible.
Well, sometimes it is a vague memory, myself as a tiny twelve-year-old, standing in my overalls in front of our side garage wall, full to the top with big cardboard boxes of fluid for home dialysis.
Other times, I see a picture, as if expertly framed, inside my thoughts. It’s an image that comes, without warning, like the one I started to see after binge watching all six seasons of Downtown Abbey in the last few weeks.
The young, naive kitchen helper, assistant cook Daisy. She finally sees what she has, after pining for all the wrong men, and she sees it after cutting all her hair off, to change up her image and to impress the boy.
At first, he laughs, but then they share a tender moment. She meekly looks up at him, her chopped off dark haired head. This one image seems to go along with that moment and its audio track, on a loop inside my mind.
I don’t know what that’s about. It isn’t real, didn’t happen that way (or at least I never saw it), but it feels so impossibly true to me.
My older brother is a photographer. I am proud of this, I admire him for many things, this included. He takes still images, mostly, and preserves a moment.
That’s all I try to do with my own writing, even if my own brain works against me, not giving me more than a moment’s peace, showing me a constant reel of images like I can still see them with my eyes.
It can be exhausting, sometimes preoccupying all of me, zapping my energy, as strange as that may sound.
Bad brain! Bad bad bad brain!
STOP IT!!!
Her Headache 