Recorded, Analog Style

Several Sundays ago, I furnished each member of my family with a toy camera loaded up with film. I gave my wife one of my Holga 120N cameras complete with a roll of 120 film. She's not foreign to it, we've gone on Holga excursions before. My five year old son got 35MM Lynx camera. My son takes great pictures. He captures world from a shorter, five year old perspective. For my son, that's about 4'5''. Sure, he takes quite a few pictures of his feet, but I've know adults to do that too.

We headed off to the town of Eerie, Colorado. We headed there because none of us had been there before and we were looking for new memories.

I've come to really hate the state of Colorado. This is the place I live and I really wish I didn't live here. I would hope that all artists and writers live in places that spark imagination. This is not the case with me and Colorado. I find it to be an ugly, brown and desolate place. And in recent years it's all of these things with the addition of fracking wells and white people with dreadlocks who are sup stocked because weed is legal. These things with the rash of McMansion communities really makes the landscape very depressing. Imagine a cardboard cutout house an arm's length from the one on either side. Now, that McMansion costs no less than $600,000. There are fracking wells at the end of each block. And I just can't understand why this is appealing to anyone.

The town of Eerie is mainly these types of communities complete with fracking wells. However, there is a very old and very quaint downtown. A downtown built long before tract housing and dope shops. And these small are all over this square state of Colorado and they are worth seeing.

We walked the length of downtown Eerie and snapped some pictures. We headed over to the baseball fields. On the other side of the irrigation ditch, we illegally walked on defunct railroad tracks.

While walking defunct railroad tracts, it could have been the dark denial days of 2018 America or it could have been the abandon Dust Bowl days of 1933. It was quiet, wind in dried grass and sunshine. We snapped pictures, the three of us, the whole way.

Later, after returning to town, we had coffee and pastries at the local cafe. Then, we drove off to Boulder to drop off film

I was a great day. I remember the jokes and the conversations. Perhaps it was because we were without the usual distractions

I work with a couple of people so attached to their phones that I no longer speak with them. Sure, they'll talk, but their phones are always between us. I can't help think that these people when faced with an Eerie adventure are recording their moves and just as quietly posting pictures to all outlets that pictures are posted to.

I digress.

But sometimes the intoxication of the day should be absorbed slowly, organically. And memories of the day should be just as slowly absorbed. Then should there be a record, such as my Eerie adventure, how fun is it to see them on print many, many days later?

There is no right or wrong. What there is, is a day followed by another day and how we choose to spend those days.

As a writer, my desire would be for all of us to feel the day. Feel the texture in the air. Record it, yes, the day, in a journal or on a roll of film. But a record is just that, a record. When recorded in a journal or on a roll of 120 film, that record is so much more private, isn't it? No one will read the journal and how many will see print vs. the instant upload to the many, many friends/followers?