Why I Don't Take Pictures / Videos / Photographs

No pictures.  I don't take pictures.

Somehow I don't feel the need to memorialize in digital format what mother nature meant my memory to do, i.e., to distort, exaggerate and romanticize. 

Every time I look at pictures of me I feel `let down.'  Jowels.  Mortality marches on. 

When I look at my family, friends and associates I'm bouyed.  I am reminded of their kindness and generosity.  Their good humor. 

One's perceptions float around in a pool of neural connections, weird chemicals and electrical farts.  The ultimate good purpose of this `pool' is:

• to protect us from past painful experiences,
• to stimulate pleasure without the use of drugs (legal or otherwise),

Recently there has been research demonstrating how persons suffering from terrible trauma can turn disabling nightmares into mere dreams.  The premise of the research is that there is an element of `telling ourselves' a new story line that can replace a nightmare with a less frightening, even pleasant, dream. 

Pictures take away from memory too often.  And the stories we tell ourselves are too important to leave alone, without a context of sensation, meaning, and value.