Picture Me

Will you take my picture?

Will you make me look manly, or pretty, or happy? Will you make it look like my world is just wonderful - full of joy and excitement and the things of good memories? Will you carefully depict my suffering and make my internal anguish beautiful? Will you use me to rage against the machine of injustice? Will you make me perfect, and imperfect, and all those things in between?

Don't. Don't tell me a lie with your truth. Don't sharpen the image, don't doctor the dream. Don't make me, see, because I want to tell you something. I want to show you. Who. I. Am.

I respect you. I know that without practice and interest and devotion to the craft you could not hear me. But today, while you are with me, I need you to put that aside. Do not be the writer who knows about writing. Do not be the painter who knows all the colours and brushes and canvas. Please do not picture an event, or represent something with an image. I am a beauty, not a project. Watch me, don't develop me. Because I want to talk to someone. I need you to hear me.

And so, I need you to be you. Because the heart does not talk to artists. Artists talk to hearts. But hearts, hearts talk to people.

You will have to be couragous. When I am down, you will have to be out. And when I am grasping for staws, you'll have to watch me flounder.

You'll have to be daring. Prepared to find adventure where strangeness once was. You'll have to risk being too close to me.

You'll have to be real. I'll love too hard, long too hard, laugh too hard and work too hard. You'll have to listen for every moment, because they can't be interpreted and they will never happen again.

You'll have to photograph me while I cry.

~~~

People who saw me repeatedly over the first few weeks of my recovery from heart surgery often remarked that I "had a lot more colour" upon their later visits. Of course, the first days in the hospital, I didn't feel like I was pale. I felt like I went out for a few too-many beers with Death the night before. Hell, when I first woke up I was still buzzed! How I looked was not really an issue I was interested in.

Of course, as I can often be found remarking when my slobbery takes over, I didn't have to look at myself. That's everyone else's problem. And there are very few mirrors in hospitals.

I suppose no one wants to see themselves in hospitals. It's not a time that anyone wants to remember. Facing one's own mortality, from a stubbed toe to death row, is not a picture perfect moment. There aren't many "hunks" on hospital beds.

But, I have always found certain comfort in pictures. The raw ones. The pictures that you take half-assed drunk at the bowling alley, or in the fall at the local park. When I broke up with my girlfriend an eternity ago, the first time I felt "whole" again was when I went out on the town with my friends and saw myself in those new pictures aftewards. That trick, despite the few pictures I have, never ceases to work when I'm feeling down or need to start fresh.

I have the great fortune to know some very talented photographers. On a couple of occasions I've been able to evesdrop on ideas for photo-projects, and been able to steal peeks into costume shots. I can't count how many times I've seen wedding and engagement and baby photos this past summer. All of them beautiful, and somehow magically representitive of their models. Breathtaking.

And the best ones are those real ones. Ones where you see the picture before the project. The man before the magic. Those are the pictures that demand my infinite respect, admiration, and envy for those talented and wonderful artists.

In writing, I've known the desire and joy of working on a project, or contributing to an artistic idea. There's really nothing like it. But the most comfortable I've ever been in writing is when the speaker and the writer are one. When I write "I".

They say that my new heart valve has a "shelf life" of about 15 years. I think I'd like to have my picture taken next time. I'd love a whole photo-journal, actually. I wonder what my colourless face looks like on painkillers. I wonder what it has to say.

There are stories within me that simply can't be told with words. I'd like to tell them.

- Z