TASK #13

March 25th--April 1st

Tear It Up

A clear conscience is often the sign of a bad memory.  Unknown


We all have pictures. Pictures of ourselves: i.e. school photos, shockingly ugly driver's license photos, i.d. badges, etc., and pictures with family, girlfriends, and random friends. 

We tend to hold onto photos. Tenaciously. Even the photos that dredge up unwanted memories of people and moments of our lives that we want to forget.

What is it about photos?

I couldn't bring myself to throw out a photo because my mother told me, more than once, that if the house burnt down we could replace anything EXCEPT our photographs. 

Fine, but why save photos of people you hate? Or pictures that involuntarily dredge up bad memories? 

I looked through a box of old photos. For 20 years I have kept a picture of a woman who dumped me with casual contempt because she'd tired of me. Only she didn't tell me that she was tired of me until she'd already hooked up with the other guy. 

I stared at the photo for a while. Then I crumpled it up and threw it into the trash. Right behind it went a picture of myself sporting a horrible mullet, then a picture of a guy who dated my mom after my dad died. The guy who dated my mom was an awful shit. And I pitched a picture of me being helped to my car by two co-workers. I was drunk and they were being nice but I horribly embarrassed myself that night.


TASK: 

Dig into your pictures. All of them. On your computer, in the cloud and the ones thrown into a shoebox. 

Select 5 (five) that you need to throw away. Write down a short description of each in your notebook and describe why they need to go. Get rid of them. Completely. 

If you want to tell me about the pictures you chose, write me at joedoebula@gmail.com