The Museum of the Mind

Walking through the neighborhood with my camera one day someones curiosity sparked a conversation. Seasoned with the usual whys? what fors?etc. In reply I said I'm collecting memories. This is not such the throwaway statement as it appears. We are so busy these days chasing down one success or another, building ourselves bigger, better homes, putting a little by for the winter of life. We hardly have the time to stop, sit and think where its all going. In our hurry we lose track of time and we tend to notice things only by their absence. When they are gone.
My instinct pulls me to the soon to be absent. To what will eventually be relegated to the museum of the mind. People become abstract; a line in a newspaper column, a headstone, a faded photograph. A memory.
The achievements of a person the measure of a persons toil, the mark, the footprint is not left by only a few but by all. If we could slow down, look and appreciate the marvels that exist in the everyday it just might be possible to fill up the museum of the mind.
Everday I passed through some garages near my house and saw this old Skoda sitting there with bust tyres and thick peeling paint. A throwback to the past. Once someones pride and joy; now abandoned, exhausted and unwanted. Whenever I tried to photograph it if the light was good there was always something else in the frame to spoil the harmony. Day after day throughout the summer I walked through the garages. Enclosed on three sides by apartments and usually filled with the residents new cars. I felt it was hopeless, I would never take the picture. Then one day I passed through and there it was alone with just enough sunlight coming through the branches to make the scene flicker and dance. I ran home picked up my camera and managed to shoot one frame before a new car pulled up and parked directly behind the old Skoda. The next day I walked through the courtyard only to find an oil patch on the broken concrete next to the tree where the car once stood.