As I continue to unpack box after box, I feel almost as if I am pulling back the layers of an onion. I am reaching boxes I never even unpacked in the last house, boxes I haven't looked at in years and years, boxes that have remained packed through move after move.
You know the types of boxes to which I am referring, right?
The boxes holding mementos, old textbooks you couldn't bear to part with, scrapbooks from high school, pictures and the like. They are a doorway to your past and when you open them, it is next to impossible to not get sucked in.
I opened one this evening as I continue to try and get my new office into some semblance of peace and tranquility, rather than a picture of chaos. Out came a 3-ring binder, the contents of which were always so precious to me. It holds the memories of a time spent deep within the darkened, almost claustrophobic confines of a darkroom.
My early days with Karl.
You recall Karl, right? I spoke of him here and here and probably in a number of other places I can no longer recall. I can recall these posts because they occurred last year at this time, when I found out he had passed away after a long battle with cancer.
This binder holds contact sheets and negatives of multitudes of black and white photographs taken while in my photography phase, a phase I happily shared with Karl, who taught me much of what I knew of developing film and printing prints, despite having grown up with a professional photographer as a grandfather.
As I was pouring over the contact sheets, Karl's face jumped out at me in print after print. He truly was beautiful, the strong angles of his perfectly-nordic featured face. There were a number of times where we traversed out amidst the cold, wintery, Chicago snow, set up a tri-pod and took pictures of ourselves either together or separate. There are pictures of Karl swinging on a swing, dressed in a long, black wool coat, amidst a backdrop of clean, white snow. Pictures of Karl standing out along a rocky ridge, looking towards Lake Michigan. Karl and I huddled on a park bench. Karl and me kissing.
Those were truly happy days, full of the spark of creativity and filled with a great deal of passion and love. I was a sponge and Karl was the liquid I so desperately needed to drink up. Days filled with jazz music and wine, cooking beautiful meals together. The days of my beautiful and sexy boyfriend who left me weak in the knees. He was god-like to me then.
Eventually he fell from the pedestal, as most people will do. Because noone is perfect and placing them up there is a recipe for disaster and disappointment. You have to embrace their imperfections and try not to assume they can do no wrong.
But for a moment in time last night, I remembered whole-heartedly how good we were together at that point in our lives. How special we were. And how absolutely, fucking in love we were.
And it was so nice to delve into that memory for a short time. It was truly lovely.
