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By Ed Rogers
The sun: its light filtered by the cloud of war. You: seeking the reason for the contamination, raise your camera. The camera’s eye captures the visualization of life and death as the beams of light slide in and out of the smoke and dirt. Each click of the camera highlights the destruction; each turn captures new horror.
A voice, your voice, cries out, Where are the young soldiers? Where is their laughter, their joking? Why is there screaming and dying—life extinguished, faces the sun will see no more...? The craters: killers of dreams and hopes pockmarking the wasteland and scarring the soul. The ripped soil, torn from the earth and thrust toward heaven. You aim your camera—click! All around you, the screams, signs of death’s success—click, click. The smell: you can taste it in the smoke-filled air. The ripe, pungent flavor hangs thick, mixes with your senses, and befuddles your mind. You turn—you click—you run—you click—you fall over a body—you get up—click!
The soldier cries for God and his mother. You aim your camera. Does he call out for life, or death? This is not your question to ask or answer—you must capture the moment. The difference between life and death is but a click of your camera.
Suddenly, you feel a hand on your pants leg; you turn, camera at the ready. Your name is whispered from a face with no lips. You kneel; the burned body knows your name, but you know not his. The annihilation of humanity is complete. For seconds, a lifetime, your gaze searches his face, from the blackness of death shine bright blue eyes—then the moment is gone, as is the young soldier.
You peer through the lens and you see those eyes; they are full of life, the twinkle that had left so many years ago is back. You adjust—you twist—you move lights—you create shadow here, and light there.
The last chance to capture a picture lost to time. The last chance to know what the soldier’s eyes tried to tell. The picture is perfect, your finger moves down, but your sight blurs and your mouth fills with the taste of smoke—click!
It is not to be, death has stolen the truth, and the secret remains hidden. The lights—the camera—you missed once again. Time is but a moment, a click of the camera, then it is gone. Many live on in your photographs; others like the soldier and so many more are lost forever.
At the counter in your studio, you put away your camera for the last time. Never again will you seek to turn back time. The happy couple leave, they laugh, they share a joke, then the door closes. The groom turns and looks through the window. He waves and the effulgence of his blue eyes brings tears.
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Copyright © 2013 by Ed Rogers
| Please comment |
Ed, eloquent, absolutely eloquent! It is intriguing to think that moments which can represent the worst and best of times in a life, gunpowder burning in battle and candles extinguished after a wedding, share the same scent.
ReplyDeleteThe trigger, which carries us back in time is normally something that no one else would give a second thought too.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is for you Paul and all your brothers who have and do walk into the unknown and share what they have found with the world.
The irony is that what tears a hole in one's psyche is not what most people would ever begin to guess. Seeing bodies left to bleed into the sand after a battle over cattle or a well in the desert is horrible, but it is at least explainable. Watching a spoiled American mother and her ultra-spoiled daughter get into an "f-you, f-you-too" shouting match over how to do a bridal portrait is beyond reason.
ReplyDeleteI've seen both situations too many times, and for me it is the petty upset over nothing that cuts deepest. Most Americans will never understand that, because that is the way far too many of them live. Fighting over food and water is one thing; constantly battling over nothing except one's ability to come up with an excuse for a fight is something else.
Paul, you have made many, many insightful comments on Moristotle & Co., but this irony strikes me today as one of your very most profound. The vulgarization of everyday life, I'm inclined to label the sorts of behavior you identify.
DeleteMorris, the "vulgarization of everyday life" is an excellent phrase, you should perhaps copyright that. If one is a person involved in the world, instead of keeping it at arm's length the way so many do, it is the small "stupid for the sake of stupid" actions that wear more than the large-scale events.
DeleteAs an example I offer my pet peeve: tail-gating drivers. Americans kill more than 3,000 Americans each month on our roads and highways, and 90 percent of that death toll is due to operator error, not mechanical failure. Tail-gating is arguably the most pointless and "stupid for the sake of stupid" of bad driving techniques. And yet the very drivers who get so worked up over the 3,000 people killed on 9/11, don't bat an eye at contributing to the more than 400,000 Americans killed on our highways since 9/11, just because they won't master the simplest of safe-driving rules: stay at least two seconds behind the vehicle in front of you.
On the topic of moms and daughters and weddings: Having been hired to photograph 712 weddings before the fun went out of it, I would break down the percentages thus: 10% very good to excellent weddings where all went well; 30% where daughter was so intimidated by mother she didn't dare stand her ground and was a slave to her own day; 30% where mother or father didn't dare stand their ground with their daughter and were slave to the day they were paying for; 30% where a truce had been reached that was only slightly more uncomfortable than walking around Mogadishu, Somalia, knowing that the only reason the guys with guns on the other side of the street weren't shooting at you was because they knew you had more guys with guns on your side of the street.
In some respects, I guess there isn't many differences in the two except about the killing. However, the way things are going, it won't be long before that mother and daughter are carrying guns. Then it should get real interesting.
ReplyDeleteYou may be onto something. If everyone was carrying guns perhaps they would be more polite and circumspect. Please refer to my reply to Morris, above, for the example of guys with guns on opposite sides of the street in Mogadishu. I'm not a fan of full-blown anarchy, but perhaps a dose here and there is not a bad idea. In my travels around the world one thing I have duly noted is that in places where people carry guns, instead of calling police for protection, voices tend to be softer and people don't get into arguments unless they are sure they have a really good reason. In places where arguments quickly lead to shootouts, people seldom get worked up because a neighbor leaves their trash container by the curb, instead of dutifully hiding it behind their residence.
DeleteYou have that in a lot of Memphis Tn. There are parts of town were everybody is carrying a gun. And it hasn't slowed the killing at all. I'm not sure the US is like anyplace in the world. Most places people fight for some reason, food, water, or something they need or want. In the US we just like to fight---from the day we got off the ship, we've been fighting.
ReplyDeleteEverybody armed, will just make the fight final. That anybody should have a gun didn't work too well in the old west, because once the shooting starts, people not in the argument, women, and kids, begin to to die.
Good point about fighting from the day we got off the ships. And yet when we get a couple of years between wars we are the first to worry about why everyone else is fighting. Usually it is to clean up a mess we made.
ReplyDeleteAlso a good point about the collateral damage. With all the practice you would think Americans could at least shoot accurately, but that is seldom the case.
Arming all Americans equally probably would not bring peace here, but I have seen it work elsewhere. I was in Zimbabwe at the height of the lawlessness and inflation; just about everyone was carrying some sort of weapon, but as long as you weren't involved in the political infighting it was a very friendly and safe place to be.