6.18.2008

Images Before Words

I spent the weekend in memory. Memory, as if it were a place. A passerby, had there been one, pausing long enough to peek into my bedroom would have seen me deep in a task. Surrounded by trays of slides, a scanner propped before me, laptop tethered, I loaded and scanned, loaded and scanned. The buzz of equipment musically augmented the scene. I was in the room and so very far away at the same time.

I am coming up on twenty years or twenty years are coming up on me. You pick. This mark of time prompted action, forced me to tick a chore off a list. Rent scanner. Scan slides. One weekend. Seven hours of immobility. Images and memories and colors and emotion.



1988. The Soviet Union. 500 participants. Multiple nationalities walking under the banner of Soviet-American Peace Walk. Odessa to Kiev with three capping days in Moscow. Tents and sleeping bags and bureaucracy and new friendships. Frustration and final tears. So much, so very much.

I pore through the images. The stories return. The need to capture knocking at my mind. This is just a beginning, a nod to maybe. How much will I present? How much will I revisit? I can’t say. I won’t say. I will show. Image by image. A start. A nudge. A beginning. We shall see…