Camera Obscura

Got a new batch of pictures from a guy with whom I graduated high school, of the unofficial senior class reunion they had recently. 


My old classmates at a restaurant, visiting.  Not all of them, just the locals who could make it.


Once again, I was taken aback by seeing the images of folks I once knew, but forty-six years on. Reminded me of the Joe Walsh lyric:


Everybody's so different, I haven't changed ...


Not only wouldn't I not recognize them if I passed them on the street, I could barely recognize them with the names under the images, knowing who they are.


Geez, some of them look as old as my father. Time and sun and fried foods have wrought changes beyond my ability to see more than a ghost of who they were.


My wife and I shook our heads. "Is that Jay and Ray? Whoa." Or, "Yeah, I can see that's Carol, kinda ..."


Most of the ones who were there apparently haven't spent nearly as much time in the gym as they have at the dinner table. Lot of biscuit poisoning.


Subjectivity, of course, is a wonderful thing. Allows us to look into the mirror and see things an objective viewer misses. 


When they come up with a camera that takes pictures of you that show how you think you look? They won't be able to keep that one on the shelves. Portrait painters knew this. One of my favorite cartoons, dunno where I saw it, has a painter doing a nude study of a male patron. The painter says, "How ... ah ... heroic do you want to look ... ?"


Oh, well. Keep on truckin' ...