Unassigned
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Well, they’re liars.
Ok, okay, not liars per se, but I would argue that sometimes, just sometimes, a picture cannot capture any of the words you want to say, nonetheless a thousand.
I don’t mean to suggest that photographers are lesser storytellers than writers – hardly so. I mention this because this weekend I tried unsuccessfully to capture a thousand words. Hell, I would’ve been happy with 100 words to somehow describe what I was seeing, feeling, thinking.
For three perfect days, I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Georgia. And for some reason, any effort I have at describing the beauty of my surroundings fails abysmally. Which is not something I am used to.
Normally through a quip, a description, a metaphor - something – I can communicate what I have on my mind. But this weekend – no go.
I tried countless times to snap a photo to tell my story. I took shots of the mountains, the green, green, green of the forest, the bright humming birds buzzing around the feeder in the early morning hours. But none of them turned out right. None of them did justice to my surroundings.
But I wouldn’t take no for an answer (shocker). I put several iPhone photo apps to work, seeing if the editing or lighting could better catch the beauty, subtlety or emotion in front of me.
For the next few days, when an especially gorgeous sunset knocked the wind out of me, or I found myself surrounded by a series of cascading waterfalls, I reached for my camera and saw – to my dismay – that the pictures failed to do their job.
So eventually I just stopped. And instead I soaked in what was going on around me, freed by the knowledge that I’d never be able to show or tell anyone exactly what these moments were like. And maybe that’s exactly the point. Maybe there are some things that you cant capture in a picture or in words. Maybe the moments that can’t be described or retold are some of the best. Maybe they’re just meant for you.
So while the storyteller in me still wrestles against the fact that I can’t completely bring anyone else in on this story – the whirring sound of the cicades, the peach tree in the yard that served as breakfast every day, the way time seemed to hold still during the dusk hours as we sat on the porch swing – I realize that that’s okay.
Perhaps – and against every writing bone in my body – there are some things in life that aren’t meant to be retold. Some moments that stay alive only through your memory – not through a picture, not through words. Perhaps those moments are the most precious.
And despite the fact that this discovery is counter-intuitive for me, I think after this weekend I realized that if there are moments to be had that are so beautiful that they transcend our ability to describe them, then I am okay with that.
In fact, I would like to live a life full of those moments.
