Blog 271 - Time Travel

"I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor, It's hard to say it, time to say it, Goodbye, goodbye." 

From Photograph by Nickelback 
[written by: R Peake, C Kroeger, D Adair, & M Kroeger} 

New Year New Start. 

It's a cliché but when you are looking for somewhere to live or somewhere to work at this time of year you come across that phrase at least once every two adverts. 

New Year New Start.

In actual fact New Years day was just the day that followed Tuesday. Another day in my concerted effort to run away from everything that is bothering me. And there is a lot bothering me, not least that tomorrow it will be one month since 5th December 2013 -  but thinking about those things is not doing me any good. So I've been busy since New Years Eve - running away. 

It's amazing how much you can achieve when you draw a line under things and live in the here and now. 

A total of absolutely nothing. 

Yup... Nowt. Nadder....Zilch 

I have discovered that you cannot run away from the things that keep running through your mind. The faster you run...the faster the thoughts run through you. The concept of running away is supposed involve leaving something behind.  Freeze the current and go somewhere else.

People often ask me why it is that I take so many photos. I do.. I take heaps. On Facebook my albums are over the hundred mark (with 200+ a piece), and those groovy silver boxes that decorate my home... open them. Each is filled with those things we used to print before we stored images in The Cloud. So why do I take so many photographs? 

Well... quite simply... sometimes you just want time to stand still. 

Photos do that. 

Make time stand still. 

Years ago, before my mum got sick, every New Years my Dad used to haul out a treasure trove of photographs. Seemingly zillions of them, stored haphazardly in sacks. He'd pour them over the dining table and we'd go through them. "Who is that?" "When was this?" "What the hell....?!" We'd exclaim... and Mum and Dad would fill in the blanks. For a historian my Dad was very bad at documenting his own history. I'd sit there writing the names, places and years on the back and scold him gently. My sisters would be there randomly pulling out shots and laughing at hairstyles and fashions gone by. My Dad sitting, my mum standing as if she had something pressing to attend to, but his arm would be anchored around her waist and hers draped upon his shoulder. 

I used to watch my parents faces. Sometimes they'd freeze and kind of drift away for a moment. They left the here and now and were back in the sights and sounds and smells and moments of the photographs. It was fleeting...the switch back to the here and now was imperceptible, but I knew... they'd gone somewhere. 

There was this photo that always generated a huge family conversation. It was taken in London during the aborted filming of Cleopatra (before it moved to  the sunnier climes of Rome). The set was sideways on so you could see the scaffolding holding up the mighty pillars. The palm trees looked striped bare by frigid temperatures and the extras huddled together less for a chat more for warmth. A folly of man captured. I remember looking at that photo and wondering if they knew what we knew now would they have wasted budget and time shooting in England. I used to ask my Dad. He'd always answer the same, that if you change one thing from the past everything changes, so who knows, maybe the movie may never have been made at all. To be honest he was just happy it was attempted here or he would never had had the experiences he did. 

We'd stopped that New Year tradition.... plowing through piles of photos, recalling places visited, people loved and times lost. Mum got sick, it just wasn't appropriate anymore. The present took over. 

But in my head at New Years, we are back at the table, huge piles of black and whites, colour snaps, polaroids and lord know how many other photographic trends all dumped in the middle. And I'd be watching my parents get lost in some moment captured and see faint smiles course across their lips. It was time travel... pure and simple.

Maybe then it's not so surprising then that these last few days of this brand new year... I've been looking at photos. 

However this is not so comforting an experience due to an oddity in a very tiny bit of time travel.

The oddity being that photos of me before the shitstorm began are so recent  - so why is it I hardly recognise that person? Those photos were taken before August 22nd when the very first sign that my whole world was gonna come crashing down. (And like the ill fated shooting of Cleopatra in London.... totally oblivious of what that sign meant) 

I'm in the city of Bath.near the Theatre Royal 

I'm in a pink polka dot dirndl dress. 

And I'm spinning and the dress flares out like a figure skater's. 

The photograph is four frames stuck together to capture the motion. 

I'm spinning. 

Without a care in the world. 

Lost in a moment of pure frivolity. 

Truly happy. 

Looking at those photos is worse running away than keeping busy. As I said I've discovered that you cannot run away from the things that keep running through your mind. The faster you run...the faster the thoughts run through you. The concept of running away is supposed involve leaving something behind. 

And you only have to look at me before August 22nd to see that I have.  That girl in photographs... she had no idea what was coming. Those photographs only serve to remind me how quick the journey was from there to here. 

Then you can see it take hold and then by the time December 5th has passed... she's not present in any of the photos.

All that keeping busy doing stuff... that wasn't really running away. Those were desperate attempts to bring her back. But the girl in the pink polka dot dirndl dress? She's gone.

And it's hard to say it,  but New Year forces me to say it - Goodbye, goodbye to who ever she was.

Soooooooooooooooo.....New Year New Start.

What a fucking cliche. 

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