The Last Shot

Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree?

I travel the world and the seven seas

Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

~ Eurythmics

Look, I won’t take up much of your time. What I want to say isn’t all that important, but I feel like I need to get it off my chest. Time is running out and I just have to say it.

I’m just sitting here on my very comfortable couch, going through all the photos I’ve taken over time. Well, not all my photos. Because some are from when I still had a camera that used film. Times sure have changed. As we all have gone digital, we’ve had opportunities for many more photographs, but the photos aren’t neatly or messily stored in boxes in closets. We may have ample archives of every rock, flower, stream, and elaborate meal, but mostly the material sits on our hard drive or in the cloud, with no viewers. 

I am looking over batches of images from the past fifteen to twenty years. Unless somebody knows my computer password, viewing my photos is probably impossible. I’m missing the earliest digital images from Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Ireland and elsewhere. They must be stored on a portable hard drive. I could probably locate them if I had time. I don’t think I have time, though. Perhaps it’s enough with the thousands I do have…

As I scroll through the years, I get indications of dates and places. In my cases, nothing is left of these but what I coax onto the screen. The people are gone. Maybe they’re dead, or have moved away. Maybe they don’t need me in their lives anymore more. Time has not stopped, and most everyone I know has abandoned me. I suppose there’s a good explanation for it, but that doesn’t take away the solitude and the empty spaces.

Which I fill up with the thousands of photos, many of which I am not only the one who took them, but I am also the only one who has ever seen them. The only one who has ever wanted to see them. ‘Memories are made of this’, I hum, but it turns out I have recalled the lyrics incorrectly.

I see France, but not all the trips there. I will never return, because why? I’ve seen all I need to see, and if I need to see it again, the photos are free. I try to avoid including people I know in photos, so the landscapes are nicely encapsulated for the screen, no need for me. Going back alone? No, those years are over. Same for Honduras or Buenos Aires. Same for Berlin. (Where’s Prague? I’ve lost Prague somehow. But I’ve got dozens of shots from Warsaw, especially the old city.) Portugal is there, but not the early years, which have vanished. So have the people in Portugal for the first twenty years. Any replacements will be quite different, and would break my heart. Ukraine too is vague, but not yet lost in the mists of time. 

There are countless photos of vegetation and more than a few street cats. Trees, hills, rainbows, and rain from all over a place north of Portugal. The little plants with purple flowers growing out of vertical walls from medieval times are also a measure of my memories, some of which are severed like a jugular vein from the place where hurt begins. There are plants from real walls and real poems the wrench me away from reality and torture me, but at least I have them recorded for posterity. Well, maybe not exactly for posterity; for me. Until I don’t need them any longer.

If I kept journals, everything would be down on paper without a password for subsequent reading by family, friends, or nosy people. I don’t want that. Online, I think, my photos will be ignored or inaccessible. Good. If people didn’t want to look at them while I was alive to share them, then they don’t need them after I’m gone. Only I can recall the scent of a night-blooming jasmine in a Cyprus port. Only I can hear it rain outside the arches in old Compostela. The phots are mine now, all mine, and I can look at them, no need to drive to far-off places no longer reachable without a traveling companion.

The seasons pass by, turning, as the book says, turning, for good reason. I would argue that there is no reason to take the real seasons into account any more. I am alone now, nothing close to the old song with a line something like “Children behave…” that leads to “I think we’re alone now…” Back then Tommy James & the Shondells’ song was about two people seeking a place to be alone - together. On the other hand, I am alone now, and the alone-ness is very different.

I should mention that I’ve got shots of weather events and others of pets (cats). There are a number of culinary accomplishments and a couple of holidays, but if they have people in them, I’m not inclined to claim them. And in this way I could continue reading off a list for you or anybody else, but if you never cared to share my photos when they were taken, you’re not going to care when I’m gone.

I'm not scared of dying

And I don't really care

If it's peace you find in dying

Well, then let the time be near

If it's peace you find in dying

And if dying time is near

Just bundle up my coffin cause

It's cold way down there

I hear that's it's cold way down there

Yeah, crazy cold way down there

Guess that was to be expected, because I’ve said enough for you to figure good old blood, sweat, and tears would be part of my story. And I’m exhausted from working so hard at living. I’m weary from falling down, getting scraped knees, getting up and putting in hours of work that have all ended in tears because there’s nothing left and nobody here. Trust me, you don’t want to hear the details.

My point? Maybe you’ve figured it out. Actually, it’s kind of the moral of the story, which is that you can’t take it with you. But I can, you see, I can. I have a whole cloudful of memories that are mine alone, that were left to me because I was a cast-off, always the forgotten one, the one nobody needed or wanted. I accept that, I guess, but if my photos belong to me and my memories, well then, they will disappear with me.

It’s pretty simple, when you think about it. Nobody will miss me, but neither will I be missing anybody. Except maybe my cats. Those, unfortunately, I can’t take with me. Thank heaven for all the photos. They travel well. Travel light. Like the poem by Antonio Machado:

Y cuando llegue el día del último viaje,

y esté al partir la nave que nunca ha de tornar

me encontraréis a bordo ligero de equipaje

[And when the day comes for the final voyage,

And the ship that will never return is about to  set sail

You’ll find me on board with next to no luggage]

Like the song by Leonard Cohen:

I'm traveling light

It's au revoir

My once so bright

My fallen star

But those, like the songs that have come to mind, belong to other people. The photos, the photos are all mine. Sweet dreams are made of this.

Puf!