Fluid Memories

Facebook has a tendency of stacking up memories and presenting it to you to remember what happened on this date in previous years. Thoughts in me then flutter like doves at the vital rhythms that my life has stumbled upon. A flame is kindled and it helps me to either reassess or to claim the grain of truth of the path that I am on and the destination that I am trying to reach.

In truth, pictures do speak 1000 words. Every single one, no matter where or when it is taken, has a story behind it and can produce in our mind images as continuous and fluid as waters of a fountain. If you are a writer and ever come to a point where you are struggling for words, don’t let that wall of silence block you. All the layers of irony that a photo holds can be the starting point of another golden floral work ready to rise up and face the sun in your journal.

Maybe you will come across a picture where you had orange spiked hair. What were the circumstances that surrounded that time and place? Relay the noise and confusion that is embedded in the capture. There was a story there. What is it?  Tell it. There is a fresh and spontaneous idea in those thousand words emotionally yearning to be told.

Like for instance. The bottom is a photo of the Medgar Evers College Jazz Ensemble which I was very blessed to be a member of. There are stories that are embedded in the experience that a poem, article or song can be conceived from. I loved the photo beside it because I took a picture by a wall with a mic in it and it looks so real. Made me realize how good my eye is at producing visual imagery. The others are from me performing my original music before a crowd of my peers, another in the preliminary stages of me producing my radio show Jazz on the JNote and then another of me singing an entire song in Spanish that I had never sang before a crowd or with a band until last night. All photos show me in some way as a work in progress. Stories are works in progress. We have a story even when we come to a moment of writer's block. Find a way to break the ice and let the words flow. 

What I come to realize in looking back is the strength of steel that is embedded in who I am. I jolted from all of those things into the person I am today. The work that I pined for all my life is written in those images. And then I consider my current plight. Experience is a story. We have a story. Those 1000 words are stories. 

I am filled with equanimity for a reason. Life has been a rocky journey but there have been some accomplishments in it which I am very proud of. I have found a sense of well-being. God has been so amazing to me and I am thankful. Sometimes looking back can draw deep gloom at what you didn’t get to do and sometimes photos can feel as good as a basketball player doing a tip in with the ball and scoring just seconds before the buzzer goes off.

We may show signs of deterioration as we grow older into the person we are today but thank God for where we have arrived.