Explorations

I found this quote as  a part of an ad for Costa Rican tourism in the subway earlier this week. Ironically I took a picture of this tagline with my camera, as it tells me the image with pale in comparison to my own heart-felt emotions. I didn’t mind really, it was an ad in the subway-but it did really get me thinking. This idea of experiencing vs documenting is paramount, not only now with our New York trip, but within museums, theatre, art, the very thing of life itself-do we experience or document?

It’s only natural to remember the good times, things, people, and beautiful moments of our lives. We want to remember these things, and with the expansion of technology it’s became so easy to do so. The ‘point and shoot’ cameras made photography accessible and easy for people to capture image, the camcorder made moving visual and audio ‘capturable’, blogs and online journals made thought and feeling ‘capturable’. But where does this leave us? In a day when signs are all over the MoMA, Met, Frick(this list is endless) explaining the policy on taking photographs, people are clearly more interested in documenting than experiencing. Sure, maybe a select few are documenting their experience, but those individuals are in rare form. Furthermore these people likely understand the truth in the above tagline better than anyone.  For theatres there’s the obligatory sign about ‘recording devices’, and try,  just try to take a picture. I feel that we as people live with a near obsession of documenting our entire lives, things we’ve done, the great sights we’ve seen, good, bad, ugly; one needs look no further than facebook to see this trend.

To me this whole movement towards getting every thing we’ve done ’settled away’, and ‘cataloged’ forever and ever is a dangerous and scary idea. Life is not simply a spectator sport, it’s for living, we must jump right in. We need to stop trying to fit the world in a picture frame, we need to see the world with both our eyes.  We need to let go of this fear about documentation. We are going to forget some of the most amazingly beautiful, truthful, and happiest moments of our lives. This is a undeniable fact akin to death and taxes. We need to accept this and move on. The point of letting go of documentation, is to rely on experiencing the experience. Getting vulnerable and allowing yourself to truly be moved. Instead of taking your picture in front of a Monet, allow your mind, your heart to take in the feelings, the thoughts, and fully let go…This is experiencing the experience.  Overtime the memory of the experience will fade, but the richness of the moment, is so remarkably heightened. Yes it’s only a moment, a mere blimp of time, yet what it lacks in length it makes up for with intensity

I think it’s important to remember: No camera will store as much as your heart.

oh, la, la… 

EverytimeIseesomeonehailingacabIwannarunupandgivethemahighfive.

Whew. OK. One more time: every time I see someone hailing a cab in the city, I just want run up to them as fast as possible and give them the biggest high five ever. I know it’s the dumbest thing ever, but I have to  physically restrain myself every time I see an outstretched arm with a open palm on the end of an unsuspecting stranger. 

So Thursday…I just did it.  I took a picture of the woman(some may say victim) as I passed from behind her, and then walked by her and across the crosswalk, so that I could  have a running start. There was nothing about her that seemed unusual, and after a second of trying to talk myself out of it, I took off. I ran across the crosswalk, leapt up, slapping her hand as if I were dunking the game winning point in the championship game.  As I was catching my breathe(panting a bit hard), I looked into her eyes, and she had nothing but a blank expression on her face. I then said, ‘Yeah, that just happened.’ She stood there for a few more moments until a cab pulled up, and she told the cab driver her destination. With a turn she said I was lucky she didn’t call the cops, we went our ways. There were several men watching from a store front and the were rolling over with laughter. I have to believe that she later smiled about our encounter too.

I can remember numerous occurrences since middle school when those around me have asked,  ‘When are you going to grow up?’ And when I say numerous, I do mean numerous; school teachers, administrators, employers, co-workers, fellow students, and yeah, even the kids I babysat for.  Not one of those people asked that simple question the same way…and the truth is my answer will hopefully never change.

I will never grow up.

Call it the Peter Pan Syndrome. I mean of course I want to grow up; live on my own,  support myself with a career(that I love), get a cool dog, and really ‘make it’. But along the way I don’t want to lose my inner child.