The summer after my freshman year of college, I took a May-Term course through my university for which we traveled to Barcelona for a class in photography, and while I could go on about how absolutely incredibly beautiful and exciting the trip was, I want to share with you what my professor shared with me. We were given an assignment to create a verbal photograph of a moment. So, that day, I spent a good while wandering around until I found the perfect spot for my first verbal photograph. You’re sitting on a bench, in the middle of El Born (the neighborhood we lived in). It’s approximately 1:27pm.
"The air smells of a clean, crisp summer day and freshly baked bread. There’s a slight breeze, creating the perfect 75-degree day. There’s a shady sycamore tree standing proud and tall before me. I look up at the bright blue sky that flickers between the leaves on the trees, and I think about the simple perfection of the moment. Now, I smell weed, there’s an old lady being pushed by her husband? in a wheelchair, two gay men walk past, someone sneezes, and the Pharmacia re-opens after a siesta. The old, shriveled up woman who sits on the steps of Santa Maria Del Mar stands, reaches her arms above her head, looks up at the sky, and sits back on her step- third from the bottom. Then, suddenly, the breeze picks up, a man walks over, picking through a scrap pile, pushing a shopping cart wearing torn jeans, an untucked yellow-green polo, possibly Asian, smells bad. He smiles at me, and pushes his cart on to the next scrap pile."
Give me a beautifully written piece of iconic literature (Proust, Beckett, Tolstoy), and maybe 3 days later you would see draft #47 of a paper. Tail between my legs, I would turn it in, praying that my professors would overlook my weak thesis and improper MLA formatting and be able to see that I had, indeed, read the novel, I just couldn’t put what was in my head into a formal paper. But ask me a question about myself, or my friends and my family, and instantly we both would go back in time. I have a voice. I have a story, and I’m hoping I can put you in each moment just as I am able to relive them time and time again.
