I’m honestly embarrassed with what I’m about to confess. I feel like I’m still young(ish??) and should know a better solution, but instead, here’s where I am.
My iCloud storage is full, more than half of it from photos and videos. In lieu of actually going through it all and deleting things (perish the thought), I uploaded everything on to my laptop in order to make space in this stuffed full iCloud account. I could and should just delete everything from my phone and start fresh, except I still want to be able to access it all whenever I want, so I started putting it all into the Google Photos app, but now my Google account full too, soooooo…
Please tell me how you store your photos/videos because I clearly have a problem.
One of those problems: I take a lot of pictures of flowers.
Is this from a recent visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden but or eight years ago? Who can tell!!
Scrolling through more than a decade and a half of pictures and videos has revealed some patterns. Outside observers who know nothing about me could surmise my favorite flowers from the yearly photo crop: tulips, daffodils, cherry blossoms, magnolias, peonies, lilacs, roses, daisies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, morning glories. Okay, lady, we get it, you like flowers.
Dozens and dozens of flowers, and they’re all dead now. Excuse me for being macabre, but it’s true. Is is weird to think that way? Probably. I also can’t watch an old movie with a dog in it without getting sad thinking about how that particular dog isn’t alive anymore.
Anyway, I can practically hear you right now: just delete them! Delete most of those photos! Why are you holding on to pictures of freaking flowers? Who cares, they’ll be back again next year.
Here’s the thing: Even if I tried to remind myself on a daily basis when I see a pretty flower, you have lots of near identical flower photos back home, you don’t need to take another one, it wouldn’t work. The joy comes from the moment that particular little bloom is right in front of me. It’s always about the present, never the past, and not the future. It’s a way of saying, this is beautiful and it’s right now. Enjoy it because you know it won’t last.
Plus, when I do look back on through this photo archive, it’s often not even about the flowers but everything else in my life that was swirling around them. Like, oh okay, these peonies, I took this when I was walking around the reservoir, a beautiful but windy day, and I kept getting interrupted from my walk by a flirty serial text messager, though of course, I welcomed the distraction. I don’t need a screenshot of that moment when I have these gorgeous peonies to remind me.
And if you think I’m nuts when it comes to freaking flowers, don’t even talk to me about the pictures with actual people in them.
Some peonies from seven years ago, just for you.
Is this all a pretty distraction from the worries and anxieties around me? Maybe, but sometimes we need distractions, like maybe even this silly little thing you just read.
(For real though, what’s the best way to store photos/videos, I beg you.)
“Flowers”
This morning I was walking upstairs
from the kitchen, carrying your
beautiful flowers, the flowers you
brought me last night, calla lilies
and something else, I am not
sure what to call them, white flowers,
of course you had no way of knowing
it has been years since I bought
white flowers—but now you have
and here they are again. I was carrying
your flowers and a coffee cup
and a soft yellow handbag and a book
of poems by a Chinese poet, in
which I had just read the words “come
or go but don’t just stand there
in the doorway,” as usual I was
carrying too many things, you
would have laughed if you saw me.
It seemed especially important
not to spill the coffee as I usually
do, as I turned up the stairs,
inside the whorl of the house as if
I were walking up inside the lilies.
I do not know how to hold all
the beauty and sorrow of my life.
— Cynthia Zarin
Thanks for reading, pals. If you like getting these weird little email dispatches, feel free to tell someone who you think would appreciate them too. It takes a lot of coffee for me to get going and you can buy me a cup here or here. <3
YKWIM #95: Flowers