Pictures

September 19, 2000

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Someone once took a picture of a tiny thing that was wrong,
But you blew it up into a mural.
If it were my job to take pictures of all the things that are wrong now, I wouldn’t be able to find enough film.
How could you see that tiny, insignificant picture as a mural?
And how can you dismiss all the murals I see now and say they are just the black and white negatives of those pictures?

My pictures aren’t turning out so well anymore.
They used to be bright and vibrant with vivid greens and blues and reds.
Now they are dull and blurry, the smiles not so big and the corners of the eyes not so crinkly.
Oh don’t get me wrong--I have some beautiful, posed pictures.
But I haven’t been able to get many candids of genuinely happy people when before I used to get a hundred.

I wish I would have taken a picture of his family hanging out in Grace Hall.
I wish I would have taken a picture of the guys serving UDC.
I wish I would have taken a picture of me sitting on the dock without a ‘buddy’ in sight.
I wish I would have taken a picture of us all completely happy.
I didn’t think I needed those pictures.
Pictures are memories.
I didn’t think those times would ever be just memories.

I thought I took a beautiful picture recently, one as vibrant as before.
But then I looked at the negative and found that it was blah like the rest.
The picture turned out great, but it was just a fluke.
I looked back and forth in disbelief—at the picture and the negative.
How could what I saw be so wonderful when what it came from was really ugly?
People say I should just put the thing on the wall and pretend it’s just like my other pictures;
After all, it looks the same.
I try, but when I look at it I seethe inside because I know what the negative really looks like.

I should have taken a picture of her standing by the clock at seven.
And then again at noon and in the afternoon outside.
And then again at seven.
Seven to seven equals twelve.
But sometimes kids don’t hear what they’ve been told.
I should have taken those pictures.
Then there would have been no doubt.
You can’t say a picture doesn’t show what it saw.

I want to be able to take lovely pictures again,
But how can I with all those murals haunting me?
It was just one, tiny picture about such an insignificant thing.
But it symbolizes all you think of them, of us, of me.
My only comfort is that God likes the pictures I take.
And the hope that someday, He’ll let me paint over your murals.