Instagram (#)

I joined Instagram last week. My boyfriend is on it, and I thought I'd see what the youth, and apparently everyone else I know, is up to.  A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and sometimes they're right. I like seeing what people are up to, what they're seeing, who they're with, and even what they're eating.

I've always loved to take photographs. I took the one above about 10 years ago at Mardi Gras. I think it might have been a disposable camera.  Remember those? They probably still sell them, but like morse code, answering services, and address books, they are probably being quickly eclipsed by phones. Whoever had the idea to put a camera on a phone, s/he is brilliant. It was a foreign concept that is quickly a necessity. I love the space in this one, and the river. And I've always loved pictures of people taking pictures, subjects who are subjecting someone else.

I took a walk tonight, and snapped a pic of some roses in front of my apartment, the fading daylight coming through the bushes and the light on the shades of my windows making them look golden and warm within. It reminded me of a Magritte painting of a house on a street at twilight that I've always loved.  I could describe it, but here it is instead

I know he's a surrealist, and it's probably supposed to look surreal. To me, it looks like that time day that can be both light and dark, the best time of day.  I took a picture that reminded me of it. Armchair artist.  I walked to the store, and noticed how beautiful the sky was above my favorite hill in the park. I think it's on the other side of the freeway, but it looks closer.  I took a picture and posted it to Instagram.  A picture is worth a thousand words.  It's a bright star shining against the fading light, which in turn outlines the hill. I couldn't get the exact blue of the sky. I've never found that you can get the exact colors you're looking for on the camera phone, or probably even on most cameras. You can never capture the depth, either, it looks so much closer always in person, that light in the night like the white rind on a wateremelon, but descending into dark instead of that deep sweet fruit. Maybe a picture is only worth a few words about some things.

I've always loved the sky. I grew up in Nebraska and New Mexico, places where you could see for miles. In Nebraska the flat and corn went on forever, but you can look up and there's nothing but sky, sometimes high, blue, and cloudless, sometimes as close as your ceiling. In New Mexico, you can see even further.  If you are ever depressed by your surroundings, you can look up and feel nothing but freedom, and see only beauty. The southwest sky is dramatic, inconceivable if you haven't experienced it. When I lived in New York I tried to explain the idea of Western space to people who hadn't seen it.  It's not really possible, even with a picture.  People would come back and say, "wow, the sky really is big out there."  Yes, it really is. I had to come back, it's what I missed.

A simple walk tonight.  Thank you instagram for reminding me the distance between what I see and what I'm communicating, and for giving us another tool to get a little closer to it.