These tiny images of frozen moments, the way we remember life.  I am often reminded how great my memory is, which makes me feel like a fraud.  In my mind, I remember almost nothing.  Less than a millionth, I’d suspect, of what I have lived, remains in my memory.  There are odd bits, sometimes, that I remember in great detail.  They are like snapshots.

I have a few new ones now.  An old friend, wrapped in his prayer shawl, praying in the remote Jordanian desert at dawn.  The radiant face of a young beauty in the ancient tourist shrine Petra, posing irresistibly near a desert weed I was photographing.  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a magical mountain.  The fisherman’s expressive face as he held court in his little open fronted restaurant, a hundred meters from the sea.  There are other photos in there, those baby ibexes, no bigger than small dogs, looking for food from smiling humans under the “Do Not Feed The Ibexes” sign.  A small fox leaping across the road near the national park called Appolonia over the beach at Herzliya.  The skinny dog in Petra who accompanied us for miles, seemingly just for the companionship as he went about his rounds, looking for good garbage to eat.  

Some cannot be unseen.  The little Jordanians firing rocks at our dog escort, cursing him, as he yowled piteously and took off.  Thankfully Sekhnet missed that one.  She cried when I told her about it.  I did not need to tell her of the one we all saw the next day, the large pale ass of the man, squatting directly in front of his car (instead of on the side where he would have been out of sight) poised to take a shit on the shoulder of the road up from the Arava desert to Mitzpeh Ramon.  I was praying as we passed that I would not see the turd dropping from the grotesque vertical smile.  My prayer in that case was answered.

There was that great moment with the woman we were visiting, her head thrown back in a great laugh, I don’t remember over what, though I recall laughing too.  That one was caught by the ever ready Sekhnet, whose phone is a better camera than most cameras. 

These snapshots remain, along with some beautiful views.  I think they will be in there for a long time now, along with some of the actual photos we snapped.