Saturday morning after a 5-hour extension of my already 9-hour shift, I waited for Joe to pick me up from the office. With how drained I felt and how high the sun was already, watching traffic and waiting was starting to fall under my definition of miserable.

The building being constructed beside the office suddenly had a dust chute accidentally detaching, so I immediately covered my face with the hoody I was carrying with me. But instead of dust falling and flying about, small Styrofoam balls gently fell down from the 16-story building.

At that moment, I never hated the thieves who ransacked my apartment and stolen my camera.

Can you imagine that image? That perfect moment where I could have finally gotten a beautiful industrial shot: the backdrop of a construction building, with the 10 am sunlight filtering through it and white Styrofoam balls falling.

The image is in my head…and since I no longer paint like I used to, I cannot put it into a canvas I can physically touch, or a photograph I could look at to remember an exhausting yet successful day of work, of being too drained to be angry at the world, of looking forward to an evening with friends.

I only have a memory and words to trigger it should I forget.



[ missing image here]



*Ergo, come Christmas I am getting a new camera. Thieves be damned…my dad just gave me something to add to my arsenal: Sundang! (and I have Tinker, I'm teaching him to eat assholes and thieves)