XXX

I took this photo almost exactly 30 years ago.  30 years ago, I was technically an adult but still mostly a kid.   I smoked about a pack of Camel Lights a day back then and read about a book a week. I also loved taking photos.  Digital cameras didn’t exist yet so I carried around a backpack with my camera and rolls of film.  There was no social media so only my closest friends ever saw any of these photos once I printed them.  In 1996, Hotmail had just launched as the first free web based email but I didn’t even know what email was.  I wrote postcards and letters to my friends as I traveled.  30 years ago, while I was on this trip, shortly after I took this photo, Tupac Shakur would be fatally gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip and shortly after that, Evander Holyfield would go on as a heavy underdog to beat Mike Tyson in their first matchup and win me a lot of money on a brave bet (Mike would end up  infamously biting off a piece of Evander’s ear the following year in their rematch).  These two arbitrary things stand out as stark memories from 1996 . I sometimes think I  use those two memories to soften the memory of that trip.

30 years later, I happen to be back where this photo was taken. I find myself meandering back to this place often since then, maybe still trying to write endings to stories and close chapters.  And I was reminded of it all when I coincidentally  saw on the news last week that  they convicted someone of that 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.

30 years goes by fast and slow.  There are moments when it all drags and drips, days into weeks into months. Then there are times when you have to hold on for dear life and hope you don’t get whiplash. Either way, one day you wake up 30 years later and it’s all gone, the time, the places as you know  them, some of the people. Even some of the memories, they go, too. The photos, fortunately, remain. Even the ones that never made it to instagram.

South Korea, 1996