Musing on Mortality

I was reading one of my daily blogs this morning over breakfast and followed a link to a guy, Ransom Riggs, who's hobby is collecting old photos.  Old photos of perfect strangers.  He calls his collection "Talking Pictures" and is printing a book of his photos.

Here's his video, which is heartwrenching, and cool, and reminds me of...well, more on that in a minute.

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Okay, about the "reminds me of..." bit.  Let me backtrack.

Jan--my BFF--and I used to haunt the thrift stores and estate sales of Seattle back when we both lived there in the 1980s and '90s.  We had an affinity for 1940s-era clothing, and odd bits of memorabilia.  I went for vases by Hull and McCoy (some, even as I write this, are showcased above the cabinets in the kitchen); Jan went for...get this...strangers' photos, among other things.  She would spend ages sorting through boxes of pictures, selecting them by some process I didn't understand, and I suspect, she didn't either.  I asked her once why she did this weird thing.  She told me she felt sorry for these lost people; how sad that they ended up, forgotten and alone, in a Seattle thrift store.  That's Jan.  She saves lost people.  Even now, in her daily world, she is caring for the lost and alone elderly folks where she lives in northern Idaho.

So how peculiar I found it this morning, that there is another like her out there, fascinated and mesmerized, not only by strangers, but by the things they wrote on their pictures.  I can't wait to tell her about this.

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Now, back to Ransom Riggs (and wow, what a name).  At the bottom of this article, there are other links to more of his photos, if you're interested.

As I gazed at these pictures, and read the words written by long-gone people, it made me feel that mortality pang--a feeling I try very hard to avoid the older I get.  All these views and comments, across the span of years, dumped into boxes in thrift stores, antique shops, estate sales.  I have several boxes of my own photos from various stages of my life.  Will they end up being picked through by other strangers, wondering who I was..??  Frankly, it creeps me out.

Eventually--since all my recent photos and everyone else's are now digital--there won't be boxes of pictures in stores or shops to sort through.  My blog and photo programs with all my pictures will be erased when I am.  There won't be any paper trail of images.  No one to sit on the floor of an antique shop thumbing through lives...curious and questioning.  There won't be a Jan or Ransom taking strangers into their homes for safekeeping.

Is that a good thing, or a sad thing..??  Maybe it doesn't even matter.  Maybe, for a split second in time, we record our lives as they were at that moment and that's good enough.  After all, once we've slipped the mortal coil, we won't care.  And, cripes, now I've just had a mini-epiphany:  If I looked at my hundreds (okay, thousands) of photos--paper and digital--I would predominately have nature, animal or architectural shots.  I don't take many people photos.  Is that subconscious on my part..??  Perhaps I don't want strangers looking at my people in dusty boxes on the floor of a thrift store.

Well, now that I can feel the Grim Reaper chuckling over my shoulder, I think I'll end this musing on mortality.  Life is so fleeting, whether we try to record it in photographs or not, and we should just enjoy and savor each moment.  And, holy crap, where's my camera..??  I need to go take a picture of something...a mountain...a bird...the beauty in my life.