SAY CHEESE

I’ve been looking at and thinking about the pictures of my family and our lives together. I love to get lost in the warm, rich nostalgia, but when I’d finished my reverie over the photos I began to realize the whole phenomenon and beauty of pictures. I thought about how long my pictures could last if they were locked up in a controlled environment, maybe a million years, I don’t know?

Then I thought of the pictures stored in my head from thirty years ago that I can bring up in my mind’s eye at any moment of any day. Then I wondered if there is a collective memory somewhere of all the pictures from all the heads of all humans over all human history? Then I wondered if maybe technology might be invented that could access the collective memory and pictures of all humans that have ever existed, so that, a thousand years from now a person could put a device on their head and experience any moment or day of my life as though it were his own? Then I thought, am I such a human now experiencing the whole life of a guy named Jack Shinholser? Then I thought, maybe I better stop thinking about this stuff, I’m beginning to feel a little crazy.

Jack