Our Minds: An Internal Camera

I know for English, technically we aren't required to write blog posts anymore but what I've found is that every Wednesday it's almost customary for me to sit down and write one. So therefore, regardless of whether anyone else continues to do so, I will continue to write blog posts.

Last night following the feedback I received from my group in English class concerning my paper I decided to include a personal experience I've had with severe weather. It was more of a brush, but nonetheless an experience at that! So my Mom and I delved into box after box of pictures stacked between the dry sink and old 50's organ in our living room, searching one elusive photograph that my Mom had snapped of the encroaching storm. It was nowhere to be found.

But the story goes like this: roughly three to four years ago my family and I were driving down to Appleton to the Fox River Mall - which is incredibly better than any mall in Sheboygan - when the sky to the right of the highway grew ominously dark with an approaching thunderstorm. Without warning a cloudburst came upon us and thick, pulsing sheets of rain came down onto the road, forcing my Dad - who was driving - to pull to the highway's shoulder and wait it out. From the one mental picture that I have I can see the rain coming down almost like clear curtains, folding around the car, obscuring the view ahead to an undulating array of lights. It passed quickly, just like any other cloudburst and we continued on our way. This was when my Mom snapped the picture from her position in the passenger's seat. Only later upon arriving at Fox River did we learn that there had been a tornado warning and a tornado and briefly touched down not far from where we were on the highway. That time was the closest I had come to a tornado.

So what, you might ask, was the reason for that story? Well, going all the way back to my Mom and I searching for that photo, I knew she had taken it but at the same time my mind offered up a clear snapshot of that exact photo. I could see the view out the windshield from where I had been sitting, watching the thick torrents of rain. I could see the ominous sky churning with darkened clouds. Why did my mind take those photos, per se? Was the event so heartening? Was it the beginning of my mild obsession with severe weather?

Referring to this blog post's title, I'm sure that each of us have photos from certain times, places, events and memories in our minds. Perhaps some are stored in dusty boxes, stuffed into the far corners of our minds shrouded in cobwebs because they are too painful to open. Others are at the forefront of everything, bursting at the seams with pictures we cherish deeply, whether they are of passed loved ones, a friend who has moved far away or any other number of things.

As misplaced as this may seem in any of my short stories I have always compared the human mind to the attic in a house. Now it's probably obvious to you all that this comparison stems from my palpable obsession with old houses. But that is always how I've viewed it. An attic is where we place belongings that have nowhere else to go. It's a place where forgotten things often spring upon us as we crack open the wooden door for spring cleaning. It's a place where musty smells and stale memories sometimes leak through the floorboards we've tried so hard to seal, separating our hearts from painful memories we can't dispel, but can push under the eves as far as possible.

One of those insistent memories for me, as my Mom and I continued to sift through the photographs, were those of my late Aunt Lily - my mother's sister. She had passed away from a long battle with lung cancer in January of late year, shortly after her fifty-first birthday. Each picture I found of her was a stab to the heart, but a ray of sunshine at the same time. With each one I found I felt like stuffing it underneath the eves, not willing to revisit those precious times I had with her. But yet now that they were in the light, I found I couldn't look away Despite the pain, I found joy in those photographs, remembering how humorous and caring my Aunt was. I knew such photographs were inevitable, they were mixed in with the others, as if that attic where we had so carefully divided memories in separated corners had mixed them all together. Each memory, painful or not, was there to see and experience.

Whether this blog makes no sense, or somehow relays something to somebody, this is how I write my short stories. With a sometimes abstract, often metaphorical flare. I am very fond of metaphors.