Fiction Story #9 ("Camera")

1/9/11

Film

She had watched the whole world through the lens of a camera. Always recording, documenting, taking photographs as a way to remember things. Important events, birthdays, parties, even at nice dinners, she’d break out the camera.

As a little girl, she found her grandfather’s Polaroid in the attic one afternoon while snooping around. It had been raining for days, and the family house still held a mystery behind every door. Or at least, it had seemed that way until she found the box with his camera in it. Something about the small metal case with its gleaming glass eye shining out at her and suddenly she didn’t see the dust or the scratches or the worn-out strap, but only its potential.

Unlike her affinity for dolls, horses, or tigers, her obsession with the camera refused to fade, but only seemed to deepen as she got older. There were always new accessories to buy and new equipment to buy. A new process to learn or a new technique to study – it seemed to have no end, and she couldn’t be happier. She loved the essence of its simplicity: a box, film, a lens. Exposing the dark film to light for only a fraction of a second, capturing that singular moment of time – but not only taking the photograph, but the process of shedding light on something that had lived in darkness its whole life.

Years later, she would look back in wonder at the photos she had taken and weep. Preserved so perfectly, the images never changed. Though the world kept turning, and the unstoppable march of seasons trudged on, she knew what Rockefeller Plaza looked like in the winter of 2072.

Even now that the buildings were destroyed, the surrounding water long since poisoned, she had her photos. The world could take everything, and even though she knew she would have no children to pass on these dreams, a hope stayed in her mind that one day someone would find her hiding in here. That they might find her and the treasures she kept – a lifetime laid out in a series of chemical processes on paper – and that they would remember.