cookiethief.livejournal.com

Tweet!

• 22:47 Weddings give me the blues.. Ill be out of service this weekend #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

1-8-99

Kimberly,

I just wanted to tell you how much last weekend meant to me. I think of you all of the time now and want to see more of you... every day and night, if that were possible.

I decided to write you this letter in a book because the title best describes what you give me. I think that you and I have both heard "I love you" so many times that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. I can't imagine anyone telling a person after seeing them for one week that they love them, and really meaning it. But you definitely give me "an unbearable lightness of being." I think of you and I feel happy. I hear your voice and everything else disappears. I'm not going to waste time trying to figure out what this is or give it a name.

I don't know where I'll be two years from now, probably not here, but it really doesn't matter. You've already given me something very special and I won't ask for more than that. I'm not a possessive person and would never try to tell you what to do or who to see. That doesn't effect my feelings for you in the least. I'm just very happy that I was able to get to know you better after all these years and I know that I would have missed something unique and wonderful if I had never asked you to dinner. I hope that you share some of these feelings and I can't wait until I see you again.

Guy

I cannot BEGIN to tell you how beautiful, how empowering, how exciting the shutter sound is. A butterfly patting softly against a brick wall and your cheek makes the same noise; it doesn't matter that one surface is soft while the other is rough. It's still hypnotizing.

It feels like cheating.

I receieved a hand-me-down camera from my mother - a rusty, well-used instrument of companionship. I couldn't do much with the Olympus OM-1, though I yearned to let it serve its purpose in my palms. Some levers and dials don't turn, there's a fair amount of mold growing inside, and it's simply quite past its former glory. I vowed to have it fixed, no matter what the cost. Surely even hundreds of dollars would be worth it? To have a memory come back to life?

Oh, this camera has been haunting me since it came into my possession. It lives in a basket with several camera parts and two older cameras, one antique. It's snug there like Jeannie in her bottle; there's even padded pink cloth surrounding the walls. Every few months I would take it out and wistfully cradle it, imagining the possibilities it would create for me once I had it cleaned and fixed. We would be constant companions, just as it was for the several people ahead of me.

Today I cheated on this dream. For just $100 and the cost of film, I have an Olympus OM-PC that works (along with an actual bag and some miscellaneous useful parts). It's shiny. It was the companion of a professional photographer and his daughter during high school, but today it's mine. Any other birthday gift to myself couldn't have been more welcoming. She shines in my presence, eager to do my bidding. Let's focus on this, she says! It's easy to take pictures of common household objects when you have such a willing friend. If taken care of properly, this camera will serve me through the next twenty years.

The OM-1 will fall back into memory. The basket will be tucked away into the closet with the other failed art projects and unexperienced ideas.

It's worth it. To hear that shutter sound is to let myself fall in love again.

Tweet!

• 00:26 Could spend hours at notalwaysright.com #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

think of it as a "teaser trailer"

This story will be included in my collection of short stories, once I write all of them.

The Library in the Blitz (tentative title)

( Read more... )