the finer line

I thought that maybe it would help me to look at a picture of my ancestors each morning before starting my day. That it would help with the dull anxiety that comes with trying to figure out the roadways of this modern life.  The current-cy that opened up and engulfed the planet.  A flower that opened and bloomed an angry pollen onto us. Looking into the sepia eyes of my ancestors, the polaroid smiles, the itchy clothes, the dirt under their shoes.  It does me some good to see evidence of life lived as a grinding away of tangible minutes.  The things in front of them were all that needed to be seen.

Behind the photographer a town so small against the world and yet so fierce in its momentum within itself.  An old town built like a film set – an old theater and a drug store soda fountain that in 2017 hasn’t changed much since the 50s.  The Sunday church bell rings as I stand outside my great grandmother’s old home.  A beat up Honda in the front lawn, some bags of trash on the porch and only supposition behind tattered mini-blinds.

The Catholic graveyard in the corner of town is wrapped tightly by run down houses. A square field, time being marked by the names of the dead.  Last names – flagships of each small plot. The faces of headstones stare up and out into the sky.  They no longer care about the changing world.  They live encapsulated in history.

I try to halt momentum by looking at a blotched and fading photo of someone who once lived in that little town.  Able now to live again, but only within the wind, the shadows, the falling leaves.  I look at that picture and it’s all I need.  It is a tangible minute handed to me across decades by someone unknowingly posing for a photograph.