I am amazed at how photographs refuse to capture moments. Not the exact likeness of what is before the lens, but rather the moment proper. The smell of air coming in from the sea at night while the palm trees sway and listen to the hum of a city just beginning to stir. How a photograph, despite the colors, never realizes what a sunset looks like within the mountains and in the streets.
Photographs won't ever tell me exactly what it was my love said to me right before I took that picture of her in front of that ancient fountain. The photographs will never give me back the very wonder of sharing pizza with Kate as we watched a movie after a long day of drifting along the streets of Barcelona with our stomachs happily filled on pastry and Spanish coffee. Oh you photographs who have betrayed the moment- you have only served me this one purpose: to find an outline to a feeling that I have forever.
And these outlines may not mean to you what they mean to me- but I want to share them just the same. Because in these outlines you are free to color your own shades. You are free to look at these small windows of moments and imagine yourself there. Place yourself in the little sliver of life that I have captured here, and maybe one day I will write a story.
Perhaps I will call it: All the Lonely Places. I'll write about alleyways in Paris or that loop under the trees behind the Cité U. Maybe I'll tell the stories about the empty rooms before and after once more- with feeling.
Or perhaps I will title my story: Today the Sky Burned Perfect. I'll write about running along the beaches of Barcelona with the sloshing of the sea and the gradual awakening of city lights.
Better yet, I can call it: The City's I Love Once. Those will be stories about Frankfurt and Bacharach. London and Berlin. Those cities I only came to know fleetingly. They will be love stories about homes I could have had.
But best of all- I can call my story: The Months I Fell in Love Again.
But that story wouldn't be about a place at all.
Here are the Outlines to a Story.
All my pictures so far.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
These Empty Rooms
I drift through the hallways here at Cité Universitaire. Doorways are left ajar and I glance sideways to the scenes of melancholy that linger there. People clearing out their belongings opening that sad space. Its not the same space as when we arrived- it is a space filled with a quiet moment of heavy sighs.
When we entered these rooms there were so full of wonder. Brand new world for us to fill with possessions and stories from all the brand new days. These were the rooms we'd rush into after our classes, and they would be the guardians to our late nights of studying and talking. Radiating with all the words shared with friends. Outside, the night would embrace the small touches of light coming from these rooms. They would be there every day we returned from the heights of Arc de Triumph or the sanctity of Notre Dame.
Yes, these were the rooms that held the hard moments too. The passing of a love one would echo in my room. I would lose myself completely- numb and hurting, questioning and weeping. Oh this room was there holding me through the darkest moment I ever felt.
And these rooms filled up with every passing day. And now, some windows are opened as belongings are packed away. The Paris air comes in and it seems to sweep away all the weight that stood there. One by one the inhabitants leave to the wideness of the world and these rooms remain behind with our stories going somewhere else.
Where do our stories go? Where do they live once we've found new places to fill with all our lives? I think that they just sit outside in the trees, or perhaps behind the moon. I think they live somewhere beyond even our own hearts. They find rooms of their own, and we knock upon they're doors as we move through the hallways of our lives. Oh those rooms never empty.
But now, the space is not like when we arrived. The space seems barren and without potential now. Its as if no more stories will be made, and instead they are desolate, 12 by 14 deserts being abandoned.
And I ran through the night. I felt the Paris fog, and I saw the outlines of buildings so old and yet so familiar to me now. Am I really leaving? Am I really clearing out my own room now?
Spinning through the Paris park that I ran through week in and week out, I can't believe that this fog is coming in to swallow me up. And yet, this air is so sweet, so full of the stories still be written.
All the rooms to come. The ones that still beckon stories. And all the rooms that I will revisit.
I looked up and saw the sweeping light from the Eiffel Tower way out in the shimmering city I got so use to living in. It rushed across the open sky and was gone. I paused a moment, breathing heavy, and just felt the profound ways in which I have changed because of this place. And I wonder,
what other shimmering places and memories lie their in the landscape of the heart waiting to find their expression?
When we entered these rooms there were so full of wonder. Brand new world for us to fill with possessions and stories from all the brand new days. These were the rooms we'd rush into after our classes, and they would be the guardians to our late nights of studying and talking. Radiating with all the words shared with friends. Outside, the night would embrace the small touches of light coming from these rooms. They would be there every day we returned from the heights of Arc de Triumph or the sanctity of Notre Dame.
Yes, these were the rooms that held the hard moments too. The passing of a love one would echo in my room. I would lose myself completely- numb and hurting, questioning and weeping. Oh this room was there holding me through the darkest moment I ever felt.
And these rooms filled up with every passing day. And now, some windows are opened as belongings are packed away. The Paris air comes in and it seems to sweep away all the weight that stood there. One by one the inhabitants leave to the wideness of the world and these rooms remain behind with our stories going somewhere else.
Where do our stories go? Where do they live once we've found new places to fill with all our lives? I think that they just sit outside in the trees, or perhaps behind the moon. I think they live somewhere beyond even our own hearts. They find rooms of their own, and we knock upon they're doors as we move through the hallways of our lives. Oh those rooms never empty.
But now, the space is not like when we arrived. The space seems barren and without potential now. Its as if no more stories will be made, and instead they are desolate, 12 by 14 deserts being abandoned.
And I ran through the night. I felt the Paris fog, and I saw the outlines of buildings so old and yet so familiar to me now. Am I really leaving? Am I really clearing out my own room now?
Spinning through the Paris park that I ran through week in and week out, I can't believe that this fog is coming in to swallow me up. And yet, this air is so sweet, so full of the stories still be written.
All the rooms to come. The ones that still beckon stories. And all the rooms that I will revisit.
I looked up and saw the sweeping light from the Eiffel Tower way out in the shimmering city I got so use to living in. It rushed across the open sky and was gone. I paused a moment, breathing heavy, and just felt the profound ways in which I have changed because of this place. And I wonder,
what other shimmering places and memories lie their in the landscape of the heart waiting to find their expression?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
At the End of a Journey
I haven't updated in a while. I fail.
We are nearly at the end of our time in Paris, and I realize now that we need to post pictures both of the monuments we have seen, as well as the every day things that we experience.
It's a lot like when I was atop the Arc de Triumph a couple weeks back. All the world was a glitter with these lights- one bleeding into the next and setting the world alight. Yet, how wonderful is the world down on the streets. How wonderful was the world sitting outside a Paris café talking with my French conversation leader and his girlfriend from Madrid? The first trip Kate and I took through Paris streets seeing apartments older than we are, and leading to a church older than the nation of France.
---
The rain falls differently here. It falls outside markets and in parks, on international students' dorms, and just outside the window to the room I called home. The rain falls on different people here. The rain falls in the streets as people scurry home with bread for dinner just under their arms. It saturates this world with words I don't know and with attitudes I don't seem to understand. This world is awash with this fresh rain that brings not newness, but a new sense of the old. Rain has fallen on people here since before the oldest church was built here- and it will fall forever, washing this world with a constant history. All the while, new people will walk beneath it.
So we are leaving Paris- we are leaving this every day life in a little less than two weeks- and then we become new strangers in new places. I wonder how the rain falls in Barcelona?
We are nearly at the end of our time in Paris, and I realize now that we need to post pictures both of the monuments we have seen, as well as the every day things that we experience.
It's a lot like when I was atop the Arc de Triumph a couple weeks back. All the world was a glitter with these lights- one bleeding into the next and setting the world alight. Yet, how wonderful is the world down on the streets. How wonderful was the world sitting outside a Paris café talking with my French conversation leader and his girlfriend from Madrid? The first trip Kate and I took through Paris streets seeing apartments older than we are, and leading to a church older than the nation of France.
---
The rain falls differently here. It falls outside markets and in parks, on international students' dorms, and just outside the window to the room I called home. The rain falls on different people here. The rain falls in the streets as people scurry home with bread for dinner just under their arms. It saturates this world with words I don't know and with attitudes I don't seem to understand. This world is awash with this fresh rain that brings not newness, but a new sense of the old. Rain has fallen on people here since before the oldest church was built here- and it will fall forever, washing this world with a constant history. All the while, new people will walk beneath it.
So we are leaving Paris- we are leaving this every day life in a little less than two weeks- and then we become new strangers in new places. I wonder how the rain falls in Barcelona?
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