Traveling in Time

This boy – this glorious boy – followed me through the southern Bangladeshi village trailed by a gaggle of children. He was determined to do a traditional dance for me and to get me to photograph him – and his friends said that I would never do it. He trailed me and tapped on my shoulder announcing in simple English that he was going to dance, and that I had to take a picture. Well, how could I resist, right?

So bold a boy with so minor a request. Well the children gathered in a semi circle around us and started a slow clapping as the boy started to lift his legs one by one, partially cross them and slap them – a dance, not too unlike some southern Alpine dances I’ve seen. I started clicking away, my autowinder doing all the work as the tempo of the clapping accelerated until the boy was a blur of flailing arms and legs and the children were a mass of giggles. Then everything came to a sudden halt and the dancer gave me the lovely vogue that I captured for all eternity – or until the paper and chemicals disintegrates and the image is lost forever. But for now, there he is a brave, outgoing and talented boy who – against the predictions of his friends – got the foreign woman to photograph his dance.

I look at his photo sometimes and wonder what has become of him. Is he working an oil rig in one of the Gulf States? Did he get an education and move to the city? Did he remain in the same village and is now a married householder with children of his own? Is he still a leader of his peers or has the world crushed that natural ability to fit a more docile mold? How has time ravaged that strong body and that smooth skin? Where have the tides of life taken him?

TR over on his site From the Faraway . . . Nearby recently posted a beautiful piece entitled, “Not Today”. I urge you all to read it and really think about it. Superficially, it’s about a day of travels in which none of the planned destinations or sites are seen. A deeper read reveals all of the unplanned things that happened instead. I was left reading that homage to life’s empty space thinking, “So this then is life . . . How curious, how real,” and feeling rather transcendental as I did.

Sometimes I realize how far I’ve traveled from my own home port and wonder how my life became so unmoored. So many people I meet seem so determined and goal oriented. I have for the most part, let the fates dictate my path and yes, I’ve been buffeted quite a few times as a result of that choice. But, you know, in retrospect, I wouldn’t have it any other way, because the journey has been fantastic and the current destination is – pretty darn good.

More than 20 years ago, I, along with some friends, pranced around naked in the fountain after midnight at the Busch-Reisinger Museum: a bunch of kids on their way back from a night at the Plow and Stars – a pretty standard prank for Saturday night in a college town. But today, I look different, I feel different, I think differently; I emote differently . . . so am I really still the same person? Generally, such changes are simply attributed to a growing maturity that is so delayed in the western world, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to think of those changes as a change in identity instead. Perhaps that is a better way to think of our past selves anyway – not as part of a continuum, but rather as discrete individuals somehow related to each other – that way each self can be fully appreciated, understood and perhaps reintegrated someday.

When we reflect on the past or go through old photographs we become, in a way, time travelers. So many frozen moments, so many images of people locked unchanging in the prison of our minds. Smile at the sepia-toned face of an old lover and remember his touch. He has probably changed as much as you have – and yet for you, he is forever twenty-five.

Consider for a moment the changes brought by the passage of time to an artist who recorded the events – like Rembrandt or Durer. Durer realized that he was creating his own immortality and never painted or drew a full portrait of himself after the age of 28 – preferring instead to cast himself as a character in one of his great woodblock prints or etchings. Rembrandt, on the other hand, was ahead of his time, and recorded more than 40 years of his life in a series of self portraits – some simple emotional studies, but a few true contemplative works that portray not only his physical characteristics, but his emotional stance as well. Look carefully at the three self-portraits and ask whether the confident, masterly young man would recognize the depressed and unsure old man as a future incarnation of himself if they met in the street.

But aging isn’t all bad – at least that’s what I tell myself despite the creak in my bones in the pre-dawn of the day. In the west we have a tendency to dwell on the physical decrepitude of old age instead of the understanding, tolerance and perspective our minds and characters gain as they grow old. It is the obsession with the physical aspect of our beings that fuels celebrities and those in the public eye to ever greater acts of self-mutilation in an effort to remain young looking. It would do as all well, especially as developed country demographics tilt in favor of aging populations, to stop dwelling on the crow’s feet and wrinkles of our aging physiques and focus instead on the positive things that aging brings. Once upon a yesterday, older people were considered wiser and were consulted on issues of politics and strategy before they were enacted so that their historical and personal knowledge and experiences could be factored into plans.

In a rather innovative private art class, my elementary-school age daughter is making a Joseph Cornell box of her favorite things. It’s a mixed media piece and when complete, it will contain photographs, objects and drawings to represent the things she now thinks are important enough to put inside. As disheveled as it may become over the years, and no matter how many times it gets thrown in the trash, I am going to try to preserve it for her so she can look back at this self of hers when she has become someone else in time. We all expect great things from her. When asked recently by her teacher, “If you could be anyone in history – anyone at all – who would you be?” With her characteristic easy, self confidence, my daughter answered, “Me”. And I, as the proud mother of such a daughter, smile widely at the unruly student I was when we pass each other in the street headed in opposite directions. (Words and Photo of Village Dancer by Laura Kelley. Photo Composite of Rembrandt Portraits from Wikimedia.)