The Stubborn Risk of Emotional Flatlining

The grass made my eyes itch and I said No more, no more! But I was squinting anyway with the sun and they said But the light is good. And as they snapped I took it all in with sore eyes: the sunset, the fields and Kate and Rob trying to capture it. I'm older than them, not in years but in miles, and I know there’s futility in photographing a moment such as this. I understand the urge, I do, we feel a strong emotion and look to preserve it to feel again later in some fallow time. So flat our lives have become that we look to pixels to jolt things by revisiting a used feeling, like watching a Christmas movie we loved as kids, but it’s never the same. In the end you don't capture anything other than light, that's what you learn when you've travelled around for a while. You look back at all your photos of Kathmandu and Lima, Sydney and Delhi, and they're colourful and picturesque but you know they’re missing the reason why you raised your camera in the first place. And you sure as hell can't remember. Kate and Rob snapped throughout the meal, and even the drinks at Slattery’s, and this morning's hangover too “because it's funny,” and “why not?” Tonight I board some plane and in the morning I'll be far from here and there'll be a few photos posted up every few hours for a day or two maybe. They will tell those who were not there nothing, and Kate and Rob will notice that even for them they’ll not resurrect anything of their emotions of love or loss. And we’ll be back at the day to day and the stubborn risk of emotional flatlining. But I'll not forget this scene and how I felt and how things were, I can see it now, taken by my sore eyes in this remote field the sun setting as dear Kate and Rob desperately try to capture me.