ME and YOU

Me and You by Niccolo Ammaniti - I enjoyed this little story told by a young man about a time in his life and the relationship that freed him from himself. It's very fast, very self-contained, and not everyone will enjoy it as much as I did. I love short stories because as I've said before, they are like little gifts, wrapped up and presented to the reader who unwraps them quickly and reveals the present. Sometimes the present is right there and obvious, other times the present grows on you and works its way into your thoughts and life. And, as I searched for the book cover image just now, I discovered that a movie was made and shown at Cannes this year, so I'll be able to watch this one come to life.

These past few days, I've been at my dining room table with a lifetime of photos taken by my Auntie Kaye who died two years ago and left them all to me. Granted, I asked for them! There were duplicates upon duplicates of people, houses, trips and scenery. Tons of negatives and lots of picture envelopes inside of envelopes. I've got them tamed now, but nowhere near down to the essence that I'd hoped for. Valerie and Joanie have been helpful on the phone and email as I've thrown away. I have this idea that a picture is a magical image that captured a special moment in time no matter how bad it is. Gradually I'm letting that go, because as Valerie says, "who cares?"
or "You're the only one who cares, so why do you want all these pictures, Dianne?"
It started like this:I had already done some sorting, but still had pictures in frames, two albums, and shoeboxes full of who knew what. I sat on the other side of the table, and methodically went through the shoeboxes, envelopes, took the pictures out of the frames, tackled the albums and ziplocks full of pictures, and continued sorting into decades, events and sides of the family. I got it down to this: which looks worse, but is actually an improvement, because I'm down as many pictures as you see on the floor. Once those pictures were out the door, I took a break and went through my own two photo boxes full of organized and labeled negatives and extra pictures that didn't make it into albums last time I dealt with photos which appeared to be in 1997! So, all my negatives are gone, and I was able to condense my backups into one photo box. My next goal is to get all my Auntie Kaye photos into the second photo box. I've got a lot of photos to mail off to family members, and then I'll make myself a scrapbook of Auntie Kaye and Uncle Bob, and then I will be finished. Sooner than later, I hope. This was a sickly enjoyable ordeal.