I Meant To Take Photos

I meant to take photos of everything I did over this long weekend—in New Zealand we get Good Friday and then the following Monday off, for Easter, and if this was Australia I’d be getting tomorrow off too, for ANZAC Day—and to caption them hilariously and all of that, but it just never happened. It’s nine in the evening now but feels much later, and the long weekend is over and done, and I don’t have a single photo of any of the fun things I did.

I meant to take pictures of my very funny lunch at the new Mexican place in Miramar with Giulia and Filippo on Friday, and then of going to visit Adrian and Lynda at their mini farmlet in Upper Hutt, where I got to hold a live chicken and eat homemade pear pizza baked in a homemade woodburning oven. I should have been documenting playing Uno (I lost) and Twister (I lost again) and eating candy at Megan’s house, or the creation of the mustache shirt I made for Daniil’s mustache themed birthday party. I think it’s pretty hard to take interesting photos of having long conversations on various couches, as I did with Alice and with Rachel, but if I was trying to give a faithful rendering of my long weekend activities I could have maybe included a shot or two of my sipping from a huge tea mug and going “Mmm hmm, girl, I know” and “Wait, what happened THEN?” (It’s even harder to take an interesting photo of someone Skypeing her far-away Mom and talking about the state of public transit in Florida, so maybe it’s better that that episode remains unrecorded).

I meant to take a picture of Jez getting his head shaved for charity on Daniil’s and Anna Jane’s front steps, or of the birthday poem we read. I meant to take one of my trying scramble eggs and boil water for pasta simultaneously for a variety of dinner guests, some of whom were observing Passover and some who weren’t. I meant to take several of the sewing machine set up in my lounge that I keep breaking, because I had the amazing idea to try to make cushion covers so I can have a million throw pillows on the eighty-percent couches. I meant to take one of Chris and his heart-shaped waffle-maker at brunch this morning to mark the first time he’s had people over to his nice new Mt. Vic flat.

I didn’t do any of that, though. I had such good times doing so much stuff, but somehow the mornings and afternoons and evenings passed, Friday through Monday, and I snuggled into my flannel sheets every night without visually recording a single thing.

I could try to take a self-portrait right now, I guess, at arms’ length: sitting on the floor of my bedroom, leaning up against my bed next to my green laundry hamper. I could capture the frizziness of my growing-out hair, or my slightly cold toes (clearly it’s time to be breaking out the slipper socks). I could maybe sneak in the delicious Brussels sprouts I made for dinner, or the new-to-me music I’ve been listening to today. I could try somehow to include the sound of the rain outside, or the variously dripping hoodies hung on the wall hooks in the hall alcove.

I won’t, though. I won’t take a picture, I won’t keep any of this. The wind whooshes and hushes outside my windows, the earth’s turns us closer to winter, and all the people and things and times and places blow right through me, right through me.