Day Three. My life in pictures.

***The Big One headfirst into the Champs swim meet at season's end. Nervous but cool and collected.***

I wish I could control Blogger and it's wonky formatting and page layout and date stamp. But, I can't. So I won't. If you wish my typefaces and line spacing were consistent from post to post, join the freakin' club.

3. Images Matter
My maternal grandparents had a fetching collection of Reader's Digest and Life magazines. The cabinet where the Digests were stored was the perfect width and shelf height to house decades of the book-sized periodical. I can still hear how the doors clicked just so when they were pushed closed. I marveled at how anyone could read a magazine w/ so few pictures and such a "bookish" style.

The larger-sized Life were stacked next to the fireplace in a brass firewood holder. (I think those things have a proper name, but I was advanced in this life before I knew what andirons were, so don't test my fire tools knowledge much more, 'k?) I adored Life Magazine. It was larger than life. Its pictures filled whole pages and bled right off the edge. Foreign faces and foreign ideals. The covers got dusty next to the fireplace, but the pictures were always fresh. There wasn't much circulation in the brass Life holder. I think maybe after a few years, the subscription stopped, but the magazines stayed, with only my frequent perusals as the means for rotation.

The more staid and solemn the pictures, the closer those editions stayed to the bottom. But, the more color ... the more vibrant ... the more FACES ... those got frequent thumbing. There was and still is one that I can can't shake from my mind's eye. The one w/ the faces and bodies of children and adults who were injured by burns. In all phases of recovery. And in that awful tank I read and hear about.

The Life pictures were haunting. Scary. I wanted to turn away. To close the dusty cover, but I couldn't. I would replace that issue to the bottom of the brass holder each time, hoping it might disappear. It never did. And I never stopped looking at it. It was the first series of photos that affected me so deeply. I still remember how those Life magazines smelled. And when I think of Life Magazine, I think of those pictures.

And, oh, there have been other pictures. Burned into my brain. OKC bombing. You know the one. There was a sock. gah! And in fact, I had an unfortunate viewing happen just the other day w/ a recent copy of Texas Monthly. At a public news stand. There was a story I was expecting about a Galveston boy, but I wasn't expecting the magnitude of the photos. I wish I had never looked. Especially in public! There was one photo a while back in the Houston Chronicle. And it does it no justice to simply describe it, but I've sought it online w/ no luck. It was a post-funeral photo, a tragic tale of domestic violence, and the photo was of the grieving mother. It was clear from the crime and funeral stories, that the family's means were slim. Donations were collected for funeral expenses. The photo showed what were obviously men's briefs visible above the waistline of the woman's jeans. And something about the desperation in that image. Without the means to bury her daughter, clad in someone's castoffs ... it all seemed terribly hopeless.

There ARE pictures of hope. Servicemen and women back from war. Overcoming injuries, depression. But, the ones that inspire me to appreciate my station in life ... the ones that shape the respect I have for those in all walks of life ... yup, they're pretty bleak.

And with those pictures comes such a respect for the photographer. The graceful pushiness that gets them that close to the action. Or the stillness. When a picture has such an impact on our hearts and minds, some ONE has to have the heart, the eye, the magic to capture it.

***The Short One. Same pool. Same end of season meet. Helluva lot farther to the water when One is Short. Photos by special friend w/ the skills of which I speak.***

No matter the angle. No matter the subject. No matter the photographer. I'm struck by images that are bigger than me. And most of them are.