Long ago I read Carlos Castaneda’s books about his adventures with Don Juan (the shaman, not the lover). One of the many ideas that stuck with me was that of keeping one’s “personal history” to a minimum, avoiding the accumulation of evidence that you were/are/will be this way or that. As a way, I suppose, of keeping your life fluid, unpredictable, uncharted.

Maybe this is why it never occurs to me to take a picture, why I stubbornly insist on “remembering things my way” instead of recording it. Either that, or the fact that I find myself laughably unphotogenic. There are people — I’ve met and known many — who translate well into 2D; I do not. Whatever. My life, largely uncharted, certainly has been unpredictable. Now, for Christmas, I have given my wife an awesome little digital camera (one of those clever “us” gifts that I get to play with). I think it’s safe, at this point, to go ahead and document things… Like this breakthrough moment between our cat Bu and our pug Bacci, certainly worthy of documentation.