Snapshot: Saving for a Rainy Day

My partner Leigh shared a bit of writerly wisdom with me not long ago which she took directly from her cell phone. At first, I was hesitant. Although they seem to have a valid purpose, I find cell phones mostly annoying. I have one, but I don’t like having one, if you know what I mean. I don’t play with it or try to figure out what all it can do. I’m lucky to remember to take it off the charger and put it in my Baggalini. Whoever calls me is lucky if I have it on, am near enough to answer, or recognize that’s “my song” playing.

Yet, they have come in handy for hundreds of people in emergency situations. And think of the moments that have been captured and preserved since cell phones had cameras added to their repertoire of handy little capabilities. Once again, we can see the good, the bad, and the ugly that can occur as a result of trigger happy cell phone users. Simply check out My Face or You Tube and there you have it--cell phone abuse at its finest.

Metaphorically, however, there is something for the artist to learn from the inimitable cell phone’s ability to catch the moment. Leigh told me that all she has to do is select “Camera” on the phone and the word “Capture” appears which she chooses if she wants to snap a photo. She came to me while I was writing in my journal the other day and explained the concept, “image-capture,” to me.

She asked, “You know how when you want to photograph something with your cell phone you select image capture and then you’re able to snap the picture?”

I said, “No.”

“Well, you can,” she continued unperturbed. “And I’m using that idea metaphorically in my writing. You know how boring writing in your journal can be when you start every day with ‘Well, I did this and that and this and blah, blah, blah...?”

“Absolutely!” Now we’re talking my language, I thought.

“So every day now when I write in my journal, I include an ‘image-capture’ kind of like my cell phone. I take a moment from memory--it can be the past 24 hours or it can be from 24 years ago--but I just paint the image in words as vividly as I can and then I have a snapshot which may inspire a poem or an essay on any given day. I (*) star the image-capture entry so I can find it when I go back through my journal trolling for ideas.”

“Beautiful!” I answer, not nearly so surprised by another bright idea issuing from my most brilliant muse as by the fishing metaphor implied by the word ‘trolling’. “I’ll try it.”

I did. And it works! The pages of my journal now contain not only the necessary mental health rants, but are filled with ideas and images I can use in my creative writing as well. Today is a good example of what I’m talking about. From what will one day be a book of poems called “Remembering How to Breathe:”

Nine hours of pool-watching with a silver whistle around my neck, white lanyard bright against brown skin. Hours of wary guarding from shallow end to deep, babies in water wings to high school diving team. This early September day, the rain, the lifeguard’s friend, drove them all away. Thunder, lightning, thrashing trees closed the pool early and left me here alone. But now the clouds thin to spots of blue, and the air, cooler, harbors a touch of fall, even this far South in Mississippi. I am 19, alone, bare-skinned, a healthy young female animal. Thirty-five meters of blue pool stretches out at my feet, not a wave or a splash to mar that perfect surface. The knowledge that water, which looks so solid, can be entered and enjoyed from within as well as from without, is intrinsic to my way of seeing things this summer. There is nothing obscure about water, I think. I climb the steps to the high board, feeling the ridged steel beneath my concrete-torn toes. I take the requisite three long steps into a deep bounce, experience flight, jackknife and plunge. I pull the long blue length, green trees blurring the edges of my upward vision. The water is warm compared to the air, a dive from a brisk day into a pair of sweats, fit to my body like one big glove. Underwater, I flashback to childhood dreams I had of breathing without surfacing, oxygen entering through hidden gills. Remembering, I swim the entire length, emerging not breathless, but elated. Bursting from the warm waters, womb of my youth; baptized, full immersion, born again.