Snapshots

Do you keep snapshots in your head? I have enough to fill scrapbook upon scrapbook...but snapshots I keep in my head are different than the ones you take with a camera. When its in your head, you can have the noise, the taste, the temperature...so many different elements that make up one "snapshot."

One of my favorite snapshots from the trip I took in May (with my dad and John Thomas) to Mexico couldn't possibly fit in an actual hard-bound scrapbook. I can't call it an image, because it has other sensory details that you cannot see with your eyes. In fact, I want you to close your eyes. Well, read the next paragraph and THEN close your eyes and try to imagine it in your head.

First, it is warm, so warm you could melt butter on the sidewalk, but not so hot that you can't walk barefoot comfortably. Now add color. A lot of color. Bright green, a big splash of red, cool blue water in a pool, tiled under in neutrals. Deep, opaque but at the same time completely transparent sky. A few fluff-ball clouds. You can smell something like barbeque, more like roasting peppers--slightly spicy, but not overwhelming. Chattering people in the distance, Mexicans selling their wares to tourists with broken English phrases.

I could keep on for pages describing my Mexico. There is so much I haven't even begun to adequately describe about this particular snapshot. I hope you keep snapshots in your head, and that you go through them periodically. It is these defining snapshots that make up the substance of you and me...without them, we would be rather two dimensional, don't you think?