Devastated!

Just got back from Sri Lanka. Which wasn't devastating... in fact it was beautiful, inspiring, amazing and well... as many superlatives you can squish into a run on sentence. I took my new Diana Lomo camera along to record the many wonderful sights I saw and memories I made... which unfortunately was a HUGE mistake... all the photos were ruined due to a light leak. Like, every single one. I'm so disappointed! Luckily I backed many of them up by digital, but there are a few things I lost any record of completely... and who knows when the next time I'm going to have a baby crocodile on my head is going to happen again!

Anyways, as I was walking home (I may or may not have been crying... yeah, okay... I was) I started thinking... and realised maybe losing those photos wasn't such a big deal as in that moment it did seem. After all... they were just images, capturing sight alone. They wouldn't show the prayers that drifted softly through the air from speakers, mingling with the bread truck blaring out "It's a small world" and competing with the tinny sounds of bollywood tunes, or Michael Jackson or, in one case, classical piano coming from the windows of the homes I passed. Or the cheerful greetings of "good morning"(in the case of adults) or "bon bon?" (in the case of children) which followed me wherever I went. Nor would they show the smells of cooking, fire, jungle, tuk-tuk fumes, incense, jasmine intermingling in the air... or the feeling of a tropical morning ripe with the potential of another sunny day... the warmth on my skin, making everything I had ever known seem so far away. Those photos wouldn't have captured the taste of a fresh king coconut, purchased to conquer the heat, and for the novelty of guzzling straight from the husk... or the sensation of the warm afternoon rain clinging to my clothes, the itchy bites, the feeling of the gravel of an unknown lane underneath my feet.

Or the freedom and beauty of feeling in love with a place, and a time in life.

There's a lot looking at those photos wouldn't tell you. But a lot that I could.

And suddenly, I'm not so devastated after all.

xx