Smile

When I look back at my past I don't remember it all...

Ha, big shocker I know, and I realize that nobody remembers everything except perhaps some super amazingly smart people but that's not what I care about in this point. When we take a picture I feel we short change our memory; the second a photo is taken something is altered. It is silly that something as harmless as: a click, shutter movement and ultimately a flash can alter so much. With the flicker of a camera every aspect of a second in time is captured: the smiles, hopes, triumphs, failures, miseries and happiness’s. Everything from a particular instance is saved—a memory is saved in picture form. I say it’s saved but it’s also forever lost because once you look at a picture of a past moment you begin to forget what happened and remember the picture rather then a real memory. What about our memory of the night, do we save snapshots in our mind instead of a narrative of the night. I know we’ll never remember every feelings, each joke and mishap, or the conversations had. A picture lets us forget more because we already have proof of what happened we don't need to remember it is as well. Are we becoming feeble minded due to our mental lack of exercise.

More then the diminished importance of being mindful; I hate cameras because they spoil a mood. I know the intention is to look back on the memories and think about all the amazingly great times you’re having but that is not what I think in fact happens. Everyone's had one of those moments when everything is just going right, the lights, the music, the jokes, the friends, the drinks, the game, the company; just a moment whenever thing is natural and your completely at ease and in the instant, everyone is. Then all of a sudden out of no where a camera appears and someone starts taking pictures—posed at first and then later going for the candid occasions. Now odds are the person with the camera out is unaware of the damage they have just caused, in fact they were probably just as fun loving and care-free as you at the moment and thought 'Hey this is great. I am having a good time now I wish I could preserve this second for the future'. If they had stopped there and just taken in there surroundings and appreciate: the experience, the ambiance, the sentiment, it could have continued. This friend presumably, then takes out the camera and starts flashing around and with that the juncture is gone. It's like everything builds up to that point in time, everything you've done to that instance just feels like a story, your story, and then flash. Chapter 24.3 ‘How the night continued after’. I guess that would just be a good analogy for something to do with cameras and time but it has completely made me lose my point. So I will stop now. The pathos of all of this is that it’s impossible to return to the state of bliss prior to the bucket of reality water that is a camera’s flash. The worst part of it all is once that first camera appears they start appearing more frequently and dilute the situation more. What it creates is a night to forget literally

I think pictures and cameras are for people who cannot or will not travel. People who are cemented to where they are and what they are doing they will never really look outside the window and why should they when it can be displayed for them.

...flash