Blogger has a little blank spot on the form you fill in to make a blog entry. It is a space for "Labels for this post:" Beneath that title, there is a little caption (can you "caption" words? I vote yes...) that reads "e.g. scooters, vacation, fall." It reminds me of a list poem. Here is my list poem for today--an unseasonably warm Mardi Gras in Virginia: Cardinals, okra, summer shoes.
I spent the weekend at home in West Virginia, seeing friends, sleeping in, and working on floor plan drawings for the schoolhouse (which may be getting some interior walls in the near future). I also spent a good amount of time taking photographs with both the new digital camera we got and Drew's digital SLR. When I look at photos, I'm so often struck by the way they can be almost perfect, but in failing to achieve perfection, they're sort of useless. Like the framing was a little crooked, or there is a weird dog hair that got on the lens and marred the shot, or I didn't quite focus on what I meant to. Because the photo is a distilled moment, concentrated image, those objectively small flaws render the whole thing ultimately ineffective. That's not quite the right language...too mechanical sounding...but to say the photo is ruined seems overly harsh. The photo class I'm in is about doing photography as a contemplative practice, a discipline, and being open to receiving images in an attitude of awareness and receptivity. Which means the focus is specifically not on the product of the final image, but I can't let it go that easily.
Sometimes when I look at those almost perfect photos, I wonder if I would feel less disappointed if it were totally wrong--completely out of focus, not at all what I meant to capture, obviously boring or poorly conceived or composed. That makes me wonder about my approach to life--would I rather have something totally fail, a person totally disappoint me, an experience be completely awful, or would I rather have something that is (or think about something as) nearly successful, almost perfect, not quite wonderful?
I think the truth is that I would much rather experience something as almost perfect. That way, you still get the imaginary version in which it was perfect. When I look at the photo that was almost great, I can picture what the photo would have looked like if it had come out perfectly. I can adjust the focus in my mind, change the imaginary lighting, pluck the dog hair from the frame of my fantasy world. And I do that with life, as well. When I look back on experiences, relationships, attempts that didn't work out, I realize that I tend to frame those things in my memory in such as way as to preserve the parallel, imaginary memory of that thing working out differently.
And in doing so, I simplify (reduce, essentialize--look, I'm constructing the alternate sentences that I might have typed!) the complexity of these failures and disappointments to a small or single "fatal flaw." If I can do that, I can take the leap of fantasy to remove that flaw and construct the alternative version--like the photos. Like the really important friendship that I lost the summer I turned 20...all of those complicated things can be reduced to "I was very depressed at that time." Then I can imagine hypothetical, not-depressed me, who would have done lots of things differently and would still have that friendship today. I can imagine going to visit that friend the next fall, going to each other's college graduations, I can picture her at my wedding, I can imagine the phone conversation we would have had last week. I can do all that because I can revert to the idealized image or memory of our friendship. I don't think I could do that if I saw the situation as one in which everything fell apart and our relationship fundamentally changed--because I can't imagine from that what the friendship we didn't have might have looked like. Just like I can imagine the photo I would have taken if I'd focused just a little sharper on that one petal, but I can't look at a completely underexposed frame and picture how it would have turned out if I'd done everything differently.
Is the almost-perfect version more heartbreaking? Intuitively, one might think so, but I don't think that's true. I think it's sweeter and softer. It's like cheating...you get the real version, but you also get to keep the imaginary, perfect version (which of course would not have been perfect in real life, just like the photo wouldn't have been). To me, it makes it easier to feel good about my life and my choices, and to forgive people--and myself--for times when things didn't turn out, I can see how it could have worked. I'm more motivated to take pictures if I can look at a photo and believe that I almost got an amazing image. Because then I feel like I might next time...if I can just remember to focus a little more carefully.
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