Spring quarter snapshots

May has been exceptionally beautiful this year. Azaleas, tulips, iris, daffodils all have been brilliant. And such cool weather. The season has been more fall than spring with grey skies, chilly days and rain, or at least the promise of it and garish white,slanting sunlight

I'm bereft without my camera. This evening in the park, I saw an elegant, plate-like fungus growing in a rotted-out hole in a tree. It had broadly ruffled edges and a creamy white concave surface speckled with brown. I wanted to photograph it.

Why? I have digital volumes of photographs of beautiful flowers and scenes that sit, unopened, unexamined, uncaptioned mostly forgotten, on my computer, on Shutterfly, on Picasa.

I am a digital hoarder. Perhaps the best camera is my mind. There, I can sum up any image at will, caption and context included.  Truthfulness is a whole other matter, given the unreliability of memory. But, it's all I've got.

The Ohio State alumni magazine came the other day, and it included a package on memories of High Street. Horrible, ugly layout. But so fun to read the descriptions of places that once were so alive to me. Pearl Alley. Oar House. The Castle. Quisno's (the original, and I worked there). The student union, in its beautiful mid-century terrazo floor and bronze stair rail glory, before being uglified. I remember a gyro place  and a record store on North High, plus a really tiny hole-in-the-wall jewelry store near where Lane Pharmacy was. (I still have a necklace I bought there.) The Blue Danube. Larry's. Thirsty I. Can't believe some of those places are still around. 

My best memory is of my best friend, Heidi, and I, sitting on a curb one spring quarter not too long before graduation, watching High Street traffic go by, elbows on our knees and just talking talking talking. Somewhere by where the movie theater was.

We had our whole lives ahead of us. It was so lovely to be young.