It took a while for me to get these film stills developed – so much time transpired (perhaps this is dramatic flourish) that the memories I at one point was able to recall easily felt like faded, long ago rhythms. How twenty-twenty of me. Getting them back felt like opening a time capsule from another lifetime, for contained in the 34 shot canisters were photos of pre-masked togetherness, a city more populated and less traumatized, references to a new dystopian film were the only places Pandemics were mentioned. Weird. Mostly, it was just senior year, turning 22, spending time with friends.
I wrote on my instagram that these catalogued frames were documentations of euphoria I'd not felt since childhood. For, "I'd never enjoyed quite so much noting atmospheric density, the greens folded into gold, and the crunch of turf under foot, the metal of the subway cars, the sounds of conversation drifting to and fro in each space." Within the gridlines of my city, I was finding ways to be present in chaos.
And as the pandemic has transpired, as election year and social unrest and personal trials have wrought terror, havoc, and at times desperation, these spaces and places of monotonous surroundings have been safety. "Months later, I’m aware that the taking-stock in my own reality became a place of rest with each day that passed on in monotony. the sensation of light on skin, the colors folding from one season to the next, the grass moving with each tropical storm that pulsed through - natural spaces became a cleft in the rock."
Anyways, I've been taking more pictures now. Letting the film tell a tale of its own, I've more 35mm shots to get developed, to page through, to immerse myself in. But this particular roll of film I hold dear. Perhaps dear-er than the rest. And each time I show someone a photo, I'm aware that it feels like revealing a journal entry. Showing a home video: a time gone. The golden days of before now.
Nostalgia laced, these are times past. and we're here. I'm here. The Lord has allowed all this time to transpire, all these things to occur. There is good - abundant. But I'd like you to see the before.
XX,
B
--
momma comes to the city. we meander through central park at christmasstime, catch a show in brooklyn that tells us of little women in concord, we eat a lot of snacks, and hug each other much, and I hold onto her arm and we stay at a place on the upper east side. I love her. I love that I get to call her friend.
I celebrate twenty-two. Feeling worn out and paper thin and bone-dry – surrounded by people I love but aware that time feels as though it happens around me, not to me. I ache to know what the path is, why heartbreak feels like such an anvil but don't have the energy to determine the answers, or the information. We eat pork buns at Nom Wah Tea Parlor and drink too many coffees to count, we make brioche french toast for breakfast, mostly (my only birthday request) I ring in twenty-two years (Exactly!) while listening to a jazz band play somewhere in deep Brooklyn with candlelight illuminating the faces of my most dear. I spend a full twenty-four hours with them. I feel full and empty, all at once. Expectant and nervous. All at once. Birthdays - a funny thing.
I spend Christmas at home and soak it all up and drink it all in. Christmas parties in Cambridge (so cold!) and holding Mom's hand during a Christmas Eve service. Watching Dad "Father Christmas" and lead another Christmas Eve. Cherry-rosy cheeks and fresh snow - Holiday Inn - hellos and longer hugs and fresh bread! I learned how to make bread. A lot of bread. Helped mom as she recovered from a surgery. Cleaned a lot, baked a lot. Therapeutic. I prepared for my final four months of school.
our five-person friend group travels upstate for the weekend, after training. we coordinate schedules and climb into an old saturn and bump our way to an Adirondack town and breathe deeply. City people with knuckles in nature. Cold and warm - we watch Twin Peaks, and eat store bought cherry pie, we set tables and clean dishes, we cook, we take photos, we converse, and drink cheap beer for an appetizer and cheap wine with our dinner. We stumble from bed to put fire in the stove, and wrap ourselves in the same sweatshirts. We climb through snow - each of us takes moments to ourselves to be, and then we stumble back to each other. Holding onto what it means to be. We take note of the way sunlight hits the curtains and we watch the dust settle and the world is quiet, silent. The coffee is bad and the conversation is good, and Panakaken at sunrise makes sense. So does small talking with the diner waitress who serves us greasy bacon and too-fluffy pancakes. We leave full and empty - at peace and on edge. Everything will change soon and we are unaware that the world which feels so constant so put together will topple, turn itself inside out and upside down and we will all be home and away from the city and each other and we will have these memories, we will have them. And they'll be developed a few months later and be sweet to remember, sweet to the touch, sweet to the taste. Because the world will look so different. It will look like tests up noses and masks on faces and spring to summer to fall to winter all stuck inside and graduation all virtual and senior year, too. It will look different. But we don't know that then. We just eat our pancakes and drink our PBR and we feign adulthood and ask intentional questions unintentionally and try to document it all. Not aware that these are the golden days. The before times. And they are good. They are so good.
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