Of Possums and Procrastinators

Anyone who has visited this site on even a most casual basis has probably figured out that I like taking pictures. How and why I started carrying a Canon AE-1 everywhere I go and snapping shots of whatever grabbed my eye at any given moment is not the story I tell today--some other time, maybe. No, today's story has more to do with what I don't do and should do than with what I actually do.

Because even though I love taking pictures and showing them off like a mother putting her newborn on display for the cooing masses, I'm lazy as hell when it comes to getting my film developed. This, I fear, is because, as a college student and, subsequently and presumably, an adult, I was and am a master procrastinator. If it can be put off, it will be. I once wrote three term papers in one night, turned them in to the respective instructors the following day, turned right around and went back home, where I slept for about 18 hours. So it has always been, and though I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be (in a lot of respects, not just this one), the habit still manifests itself in various forms--like stockpiling rolls of film like I plan on erecting a pyramid of them in my living room. (Bet that cats would just love that.)

So it came to pass that I'd managed to accumulate more than a dozen rolls of film on the small ledge beneath my living room video collection. This is, by no means, a record for me; I've gotten up to a couple dozen full rolls patiently waiting their turns to reveal their wonders--or horrors--to my sometimes-brown eyes. And I must admit, this process (if you can even call it a "process," since that word implies something structured or planned or even regulated in some half-assed way) can be a kick. Grabbing a handful of rolls--and my hands are pretty damn big, so that can mean a lot pictures and, consequently, money--and getting developed can yield great surprises, usually of the "Oh man, I don't even fucking remember taking this shot!" variety.

Once, while cleaning one of my closets--okay, I wasn't actually cleaning it, unless you want to define "cleaning" loosely enough to include digging through the heaps of action figures, video tapes and long-fallen wire hangers to find one particular thing that, more than likely, I never found anyway--I ran across my first camera, a boxy little Kodak that took 126 film, which came in bulky, awkward cartridges and which, to my knowledge, isn't even manufactured anymore (though the smaller, similar 110 film can still be found in most drugstores). I'd finished the roll, set the camera aside--and forgotten it completely. I wasn't even sure I could get the damn thing developed. But I took it to Osco and, sure enough, they were able to process the film and return to me a set of prints. The pictures weren't of anything extraordinary and would likely have just been looked at once, shrugged over and shoved in a drawer, never to be contemplated again.

But now, years after they'd been taken, these shots, mundane as they were, fascinated me. The pictures on this roll had been taken about five years earlier, when I was still living with my parents in Ukrainian Village. Damn. I had taken these shots, packed the camera with me when I moved, thrown the camera in the closet and forgotten all about it. But now the square little color shots were in my hands, recalling a a time in my life that wasn't necessarily better or worse than my life was the day I got the pictures back, but somehow remote, alien...just different. Some of the occasions portrayed were obvious--a chocolate cake, a stiff-backed pose and a glazed, reluctant smile I'd seen staring back at me from countless photographs could only have been from some past birthday. Other shots were more difficult to place in the timestream: kitties who'd long since passed away; roses in my mother's garden; the vivid hues of a now-forgotten sunset. It was like I was looking at someone else's life, even though the signposts of my past were visible all over these shots and I must have been the one who'd taken most of them (except for the birthday shots--only my mother could coax that particular fixed stare onto my face).

So, with the intent of, at the very least, culling the herd, I took six rolls to a camera shop downtown and dropped them off for pickup the next day at the same time. None of these rolls were nearly as ancient as the roll described above--the oldest couldn't have dated further back than, say, last September. But the fact that I'd accumulated that many rolls over such a span of time sent my imagination off and running. What would I find in the pictures I got back? Christmas decorations along Michigan Avenue? A sojourn among the ruins of Riverview Park? Lottie and Ms. Christopher contorted into seemingly impossible shapes? Some bizarre self-portrait?

At this point, allow me to direct your attention to the upper left-hand corner of this page, just in case you hadn't already glance up there and recoiled in horror. You know, the place where you'd usually find a cute kitty picture or a kitchy bar sign or a seasonal trifle. Go on. Take a look. What do you see?

That's right. It's an opossum, or "possum" for shory. A particularly pissed-off possum at that.

I'd just about forgotten this scary fucker. I had other pictures of him (her? it?) taken with a 110 camera Mom had given me one Christmas when I unwisely requested a simple point-and-click camera that I could pull out of my pocket and use anywhere, anytime, and thus wound up with this clunky little thing that was, maybe, one step removed from that Kodak 126 she'd bought me 25 years earlier. But I'd forgotten about the black-and-white shots I'd taken right afterwards, getting as close to the critter as I felt I safely could without risking having it charge me in a fit of camera flash-induced rage. (I had no idea how fast possums could really move, but I had no burning desire to find out.)

It was just before Halloween (which I know only because some shots from my apartment decorations for the annual Halloween Movie Bash JB and I usually host, like the nearly life-sized Bruce Campbell action figure at the right, were on the same roll), and the particular possum had trundled all the way up my back stairs and was rooting around on my porch. Now, this was unusual, but not unheard of--my neighborhood is host to various creatures one would not think of as being urban dwellers, like raccoons, rabbits and, obviously, possums.

But it was quite a surprise to find one of the little buggers making the substantial effort to walk up three stories just to find nothing of interest. It moved slowly, but quietly--I'd never have know it was there at all if not for the fact that the Girlish Girls, both of whom are relatively placid, relatively lazy balls of fur, transformed into tumbleweeds of rage, their tails inflated to several times their normal size as if someone had hooked the Girls up to jumper cables and switched on the juice. Oh, that and the fact that their loud, yowling protests against the invader on their porch made a sound similar to what I imagine World War III will sound like when it finally breaks out.

So there it was. A possum. On my top step. Checking out the view. And Lottie and Ms. Christopher were charging the door and making remarkably effective attempts to launch themselves at the screen door in an effort to defend their turf. Eventually, either one of them would succeed and wind up tangling with a wild animal that could have any number of diseases or, more likely, they'd wind up hurting themselves or getting splinters or ripping down the screen or some such thing. So the possum had to go. Um, right. Like, exactly how?

My first thought had some logic to it. The Girls hated getting shot with the water bottle; that usually made them run for the figurative hills. So why wouldn't the possum react the same way? Maybe because it's a possum, not a cat: it blinked at the first shot and the second, but stood there resolutely as I pumped what must have been twenty shots of water at the hearty, determined little beasty. Okay, that was a huge success, not. So what next? Where logic failed, perhaps technology might succeed. That's where the cameras came it. I mean, people who actually pose for pictures don't like flashes directed at them, so why would the possum?

Obviously, it didn't care for the flash one bit. After a couple of shots, its mouth opened into the soundless hiss you see above and started to turn--toward me, not away. I backed up the stairs slowly. It didn't follow, but it didn't leave, either. Sometimes, it takes doing something--or several somethings--stupid to get around to doing something smart. Why had the possum climbed three flights of stairs? To play with my shamrocks? To piss off my cats? To help me set up Halloween decorations? To be a Halloween decoration? No. It was just hungry. I threw it the ends of a loaf of Brownberry Oatnut Bread and closed the inside door. When I checked again about half an hour later, there was no possum--and no bread. Not a single crumb. The porch had been licked clean.

The possum hasn't come back since. And, considering the, um, hospitality I showed it upon its last visit, I can't say I blame it. But I'll always have the shot you see above. I'll always have that moment, frozen in time, and all of the ridiculous memories and emotions that the shot recalls. And most of the shots you see on this site carry similar loads. Each one has a story, a memory, a set of memories, a smile or a wince of recognition. And I still have pile of rolls--smaller than before, but still more substantial than it ought to be. More smiles and winces to come.

I can't wait.