i am a camera

click these to see them up close and personal. not because i'm a good photographer. just because there's pretty stuff out there.

well, it turns out that phone with the stereo in it also has a few cameras lying around inside that case. now, i have plenty of cameras for myself, all the way from pinhole to brownie to polaroid to digital. i don't mean to brag but i have an argus c-3. that's right. the brick. but the phone does, too. it has a soviet spy camera and so do i. i do not know what to think about this, about carrying around something in my pocket right now, in this year, 2011, that can take the same sort of photos my dad was taking back in 1974 or that my grandpa took when my mom was a little girl. i am uncomfortable. uneasy. so i walk around determined to show this phone full of cameras that it's no match for me.

the phone full of cameras laughs. at first i think maybe i just have the headphones on and tom waits is in there singing quietly, but no. it's the phone laughing. it scoots all 493 cameras over to the side effortlessly and laughs a little more. it slides something new right out front. right where anyone with any sense can't possibly ignore it. the phone holds out an 8mm film camera. there is a dial with an arrow just like on the leather covered metal of the one on my bookshelf. i can smell how old the thing is. i can feel the weight of it. the phone laughs. the camera whispers. black and white it says. or color. the color of your childhood, liquid, soft. i am a little bit afraid.

i am a strong person but when you can put loretta lynn, a polaroid camera and an 8mm black and white film camera all in one place and that place can be used to call for enchilada delivery, i don't know what to do. i can hear the clicking of the gears in the 8mm camera, like playing cards in the spokes of a bike. i can smell the developer from the old polaroids and i can see where the light bleed washes out a tree in a photo i've taken. i know better than to eat the cupcake just because it says to. i know better than to drink the kool-aid. i know not to sell my soul. but the phone knows me already. when i touch the camera image there is the back of the camera all leatherette on cardboard. there are the dials, the shutter. there is the sound of it. click. click. i have the brain fever.

this is the same as what happens when you attempt snorkeling the very first time. you are underwater and you have to breathe in. everything in your body says not to. everything. you will die, you tell yourself. you will fill your lungs with water like an idiot and your body will sink to the sand and the rocks and the starfish all below you. but you open your lungs and the air rushes in from that ridiculous plastic tube and you are breathing, there underwater with fish above your head and the sky in a flat plane your eyes can't reach.

i breathe in, surprised to find air. i shove the soft phones in my ears and tell dave brubeck to play something for prancing on cobblestones. i ratchet the lever over once to advance the film. the shutter clicks. again and again. the air smells like rain. it is fifty years ago. it is tomorrow.