A Lost Moment in time: Reduced to Pixels

By Craig: Life is short. So says the old maxim. We are lucky to live our three score and ten before passing into eternity. This can't be so bad since millions of people have passed before us, some go out kicking and screaming, while others choose to go out with very little fan fare. I suppose it doesn't matter how it ends with you for we all must one day cross that lonely threshold. I often contemplate what life really means. What is the substance of life? Why are we here? Why do we choose to live a certain way? I never really come up with any substantial answer to these questions. I suppose it is the way we are programed through our natural disposition, and the things that we have experienced during the linear path of our existence. Sometimes I become obsessed with an old photograph that gives me pause for further reflection about life and time.

The photo under inspection was taken in Maine during the summer of 1976 when I was eight years old. It is a closely cropped image of a man standing in profile on a beach. A silhouette, curved and shadowy from a time slowly disappearing from living memory. He is observing the sand pyramid that my father is building. My brother and I can be seen playing in the sand around the pyramid, perhaps digging trenches that will connect to my father's sand art.  The identity of the man is unknown. It was taken from such a distance that the facial features and other possible identifying marks have been permanently eradicated. The only thing that we can infer from the man's profile is the fact that, perhaps, he is not fond of exercise. He appears to be of middle age, and since 39 years have elapsed since this photograph was snapped it is almost a certainty that the man, whoever he was, has succumbed to time. For a few minutes...or perhaps seconds of his life he is engrossed in my father's artwork...Artwork, that has long since disappeared under countless high tides. At the top of the image the ocean can be seen lurking, stalking unconsciously, the temporary action that is happening on the beach. The top of the photograph has begun to deteriorate. It gives the illusion of a giant city rising from the ocean.  Other figures can be seen in the background, mute witnesses of an event now lost in time and threatened by an eroding oblivion of what it has been reduced to, and what we are reduced to for the succeeding generations...Pixels.