Thinking in Pictures

I've recently been thinking about how life changes. Fast. A friend showed me a video of someone who took still shots of their child from birth to age 10. The whole video was only 80 seconds. I couldn't blink. I might miss 6 months or some large part of this young life! From no hair to long hair. From no teeth to lots of teeth to holes from those lost. Those 80 seconds said much about the 10 years of life.

I love words. Always have. Always will. I obsess over learning new ones and cry when I lose old ones. Those moments when it takes 60 seconds or more to remember the exact word that defines the thought I am trying to communicate. Yesterday it was "momentum." How did I forget such a great word?

Lately, I find myself thinking more and more in visual aspects rather than audio aspects. I hear words more than see them. The words are fading and the pictures are drowning out their sound. I see the beautiful Texas Hill Country and know its beauty from what I see around me. I don't hear the words describing it. I just see the picture.

My daughter explores her world through the lens of a camera. She finds the people, the moments, the world around her to be more alive when she is looking on with this machine in her hands. She looks at the shot and finds ways to enhance her focus by editing the final product, molding it, until the story it tells is the story she sees. She is changing my focus.

Lola