Memories to come...

I bought my first four "stolen moments" or "borrowed memories" for 10 cents a piece.  I found them tucked away in a forgotten drawer at a used bookstore in Toronto.  They were the smallest photographs I had ever seen; the colors were reminiscent of my childhood LiteBrite; and, they were taken before I was even born.  These photographs derailed my day--a short break from writing my dissertation turned into an afternoon of giddy fascination.  I wanted to know who took these photos.  Why had they straightened the room just so?  Was the person proud, miserable, excited, waiting for company, worried that the roast was taking too long?  How long had that shot taken to compose?  Had they washed down the patio just for the photo?  And, why did these photos end up for sale?  In my hands?  The next day, I found I needed more.  And, I now have more, many more.  Pictures of families cooking, sitting dogs, playing dogs, dogs in a bathtub, men in work clothes, men clinking glasses, houses in profile, cars in profile, stiff subjects, bored subjects, caught off guard and nervous subjects, subjects acting oddly with respect to other subjects, brides and old women and bullies and cads, national monuments, ceilings taken by mistake, unexplainable stories of giraffes in a tennis court, a man posed behind a pole, a woman holding an effigy of a dead child.  Why have these shots been taken?

I continue to collect other people's photographs, because the stories invite me to ask after them.  They are not quite as fixed in place as the photographs in my family album.  They breathe and sing, falter and warble.  I find these stories, these borrowed memories, in places where stories have been cast off--places for the used and no longer cared for--and I pick them up where they have left off.  Let's see what happens here...