January 1
So here we are, the first day of a new year! I’ve made several resolutions this year and I intend to keep them! My dear wife Alice used to say I didn’t know how to follow through with resolutions because I didn’t like the idea of changing myself. She used to look at me from behind her half-moon glasses with a sweet little smile on her face as I’d go on about how I was going to be more active, maybe join her at bingo a few nights a month or just get gussied up for no real reason. She’d laugh and say “Jim you old curmudgeon, the day you follow through with all these promises is the day I start watching for the Second Coming!” We’d laugh together.
I miss her.
Anyway, I finally made a list of resolutions, and this time I intend to stick with them! I’ll do right by Alice and show her I actually can keep promises. First on the list, I’m finally joining the twenty-first century by buying a camera. Alice used to complain that we didn’t have any pictures of ourselves and I hated paying someone else to do the job I knew I could do. I kept telling her I was saving for a camera, putting away a little from each check. Pretty soon, I’d tell her, we’d get the camera and I’d take so many pictures she’d be sick of it! Every time I’d tell her that and every time I could see she didn’t believe a word of it. Well that all changes. First thing tomorrow I’m buying a camera.
January 2
Just got back from the store. Guess who’s the proud new owner of a digital camera? I told the young man at the store I wanted nothing but the top of the line and he brought me over to a rack of Japanese cameras with names I couldn’t even dream of pronouncing. He must have known I wasn’t much of a technological guy when I asked him where the film went. He told me there isn’t film in cameras anymore; everything’s saved on little plastic cards inside the camera and I can just print off pictures whenever I want. So I bought the one he said was the best they had (most expensive one too, I might add) and now I just need to read the instruction manual, as soon as I find my glasses.
Later
After a few mishaps and a lot of frustration I’ve got the camera working! The buttons on the thing are so damn small it’s almost impossible to use and the screen’s one of those touch-screen jobs that my beefy fingers aren’t used to using. You need Japanese fingers to use this thing! Anyway, I managed to get it going and I took a few pictures of my house, just to see how it works. I photographed my den, with my corduroy recliner and newspaper rack, I took a picture of the kitchen, with its yellow walls from years of Alice’s smoking while she cooked. So many times I told her those cigarettes were going to be the end of her, and she just laughed it off. I can’t blame her though. We both grew up in a time when smoking was everywhere; all the big movie stars were doing it and they seemed to be getting along just fine.
She didn’t take it seriously until that day in the oncologist’s office when they told her about the tumor sitting on her right lung, the size of a golf ball and getting bigger. By then her raspy voice had become second-nature to her. I hardly even noticed it anymore. But there was still something incredibly sad about listening to her cry in that cold sterile room, her chest hitching as she tried to gasp for one deep breath but knowing it would never come.
Now I’ve stained the pages. I’ve spent the last hour remembering how she spent her final days, just staring vacantly out the kitchen window with a look of resignation on her face. She tried so hard to take solace in the fact that pretty soon her pain would cease, but you could tell in her eyes the last remnant of spirituality, which had been such a strong characteristic in her in years past, had left. It just coiled away like heat rising from the road on a hot day. It left her as a shell, her eyes dark and dull.
I don’t think I want to write anymore today.
January 5
I haven’t been keeping up on this, but these last few days have been pretty hard. I’ve been crying mostly, lying in bed and trying to recall her face in happier times. Before the cancer ravaged her system and rotted her from the inside out. It’s getting so much harder to remember.
January 6
I went to Walgreens to get the pictures developed today. It seems if you need a camera you need a printer, and if you have a printer you need a computer and so on and so on. This is why I don’t like technology. It used to be my rant I gave to Alice every time she would bring up how we needed a television or a computer. One thing always leads to another, I would say, and pretty soon we’re spending thousands of dollars on things that we don’t even need. I raised hell the day we brought a phone into the house, and to this day I hate using it. It just seems so invasive, coming right into my home and talking to me less than an inch from my ear.
Anyway, I got to Walgreens and they told me they’d have the pictures done in an hour. Rush, rush, rush, everything needs to get done so fast! I told the lady behind the counter (who had more colors in her hair than the rainbow) I’d be back later this week and she could take her time. It felt good to get out of the house for a while. I just can’t seem to get over losing Alice. Everything in that house reminds me of her and I hurt more and more when I try to remember her face, knowing that it’s fading more and more with each passing day. You spend forty years looking into someone’s eyes every day, and within six months you can’t even remember what color they were.
This isn’t at all how I wanted this journal to be.
January 8
I think the man at the camera store took me for a fool. I picked up the pictures from Walgreens today and they turned out pretty well. The images were pretty clear and the quality of the camera is pretty good, as far as I can tell. But every single picture has some weird blur in them. There’s a wisp of yellow light that looks like maybe a smudge on the camera lens or some weird reflection of light off a mirror in the den or countertop in the kitchen. I think it’s a problem with the camera, though. I’m going back to the store tonight.
Later
Well that was pointless. The man at the store told me there was nothing wrong with the camera. I showed him the pictures and he told me it looked like a lighting problem. We got in a huge argument about how the camera was supposed to have some sort of light balancing technology and all sorts of bells and whistles. Pretty soon I was yelling and security had to escort me from the store. After all the money I spent on the camera I think I deserve to have something that actually works properly. I’m going to give the camera another try but if that smudge is still there I’m sending it back.
January 12
It’s not a smudge on the camera. I took another batch of pictures a few days ago and got them developed. The odd cloud of light is still in the pictures, but there’s something different about it now. It seems to be taking some kind of form. I’m getting a bit concerned, but the pictures are so small I can’t make out what it might be. I’ll be heading to the library to see if there’s anything I can do to make these pictures bigger. I don’t want to give Walgreens any more of my money than I have to, and I don’t think the camera store will even let me in the door, so I’m going to see what I can do on my own.
January 13
I found something that I think could help me. I was going through a mountain of books at the library last night when I found a chapter on something called a camera obscura. Basically if I can find a way to convert my digital images into film I should be able to set up a sort of projection system that makes the picture much bigger. I can set up the machine to project the picture onto one of the walls in my home. It should help me figure out what the heck this thing that keeps showing up in my pictures is. I suppose now I need to consult the yellow pages and find someone who can help. It’ll be expensive, I’m sure.
January 15
I found a specialty camera store that converted all my pictures to film. They even gerry-rigged a camera obscura machine for me, for a nominal fee. Photography’s becoming a very expensive hobby. I’ve asked one of the neighborhood kids to help me set up the equipment. I’ve become quite obsessed with figuring out what it is I’m seeing in this patch of dusty yellow light. It seems so familiar. Anyway, as soon as it gets dark I should be able to set up the projection and finally see what it is that’s wormed its way into all of my pictures.
Later
Oh my God. It’s Alice.
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