of pictures

Pictures. Photographs. Oh, how technology has downgraded you to bits of data to be multiplied by the thousandfold. There once was a time when pictures were all you had of family, lovers, and friends. Once upon a time a picture was worth a thousand words, and a multitude of feelings and memories. All I have to do I remember the photograph on my grandparent’s altar, the one of my great-grandfather. The photo was worth millions to them. The sadness of leaving family behind, never to see them again for decades behind the bamboo wall, such sadness is great enough to destroy the faith…what power. I remember the time when pictures were worth something. They were put into albums and scrapbooks, a placeholder of a speck of time long past. I can go flip through them and see memories locked away, but revealed upon opening. They are to be framed, looked upon with weary eyes when one is old. Now, they are everywhere, spammed on the internet. Pictures can be taken without limit, many at a time. Now it takes a collection of these JEPGS to capture a moment, more like a span of moments. Maybe it’s for the best, one can now store away every second of one’s life away in an allocated virtual space. Maybe it’s better to have the whole instead of the selected memories. After all, memories are priceless, but those you keep close to the heart stay warm.