Shari Vaidya- Q1 Blog 3 - A Lifetime on My Wall
It’s 11 PM; my body is sweaty, aching, and tired, yet I still keep on going. After all, these pictures are not going to hang themselves.
My Polaroid wall is something that I hold so dearly to my heart. They are the work of a chronically nostalgic person. The pictures that cover my wall serve as a physical document of my journey from middle school to high school (if Y2K happened today, my Polaroids would serve as my timeline from child to young adult rather than my social media archives).
I got my Polaroid on my thirteenth birthday, it was a surprise from my parents, and it is one of the best gifts I have ever received. My sister informed them that a pink Polaroid mini camera would be the perfect gift for the young Shari. Looking back, I would have preferred a black Polaroid as it matches my room and my overall aesthetic better. But hey, does anyone have the same aesthetic as they did when they were thirteen years old?
This camera quickly became my new favorite accessory. I would carry this camera with me to dances, parties, and trips. I would (and still) run through my birthday and Christmas money just buying stacks of film and wall tape so I could mount these pieces of time frozen on my wall. The Polaroid wall started small, but it grew quickly; my parents often complain that I'm going to damage the wall paint with the tape I use (it tends to make the paint peel), but I just shrug it off. The photos of my friends and family are far more valuable than the price of any paint restoration job.
I have taken photos in many different places on the globe, my little Pinkie (the name we are using for my camera) has seen the party crowds of both Prague and Mykonos, as well as the busy streets of San Francisco and Krakow. But I think that my favorite pictures come from my sleepy suburb, Fremont.
The pictures from my nostalgia-based Tumblr sweet sixteen, the frozen image of me and my friends smiling, eating a cake labeled “Saanvi is 16 b***h!”, and the kissy face I made at a friend’s seventeenth birthday party; all of those were taken in Fremont. When I look at these pictures, the song ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac tends to play in my head, and I think if my wall were a song, it would be that song. These pictures are the physical timeline of my adolescence. I have pictures from the best and worst times of my short life. My wall has a picture of me in every phase of my life; my wall is a visual representation of the changes in me and my identity through the years. I have people on that wall that I don’t talk to anymore; other people would rip those pictures off their wall and trash them. Pictures with a foe are now a memory forever tainted, no matter how good you felt in the moment. But I would never do that; those moments are still good memories to me. While they may be a bit bittersweet, they serve as a reminder of the impact people have on other people.
It is now 12 AM, and the pictures I have spent months putting off are now finally hung. They are now settled in their new home, on my wall, next to my movie posters and dried flowers; right where they belong.
Hi Shari, I just want to start off by saying there are still some of us out there who still have an aesthetic that is eerily similar to the one we had when we were 13 years old 😝. But I'm glad you like your new aesthetic I'm all for growing and evolving trust me. Polaroids are the coolest things in the world! Don't even get me started but if someone asked me to choose would I rather get a picture taken on a fancy Sony camera that could produce the world's clearest and cleanest picture or a polaroid, I'm sorry but I would take that Polaroid in a heartbeat. I also have a portion of my wall in my room that holds all my mementos—pictures, letters, posters, and even some art. I believe that you can tell a lot about a person based on their walls. I also really like how organized your wall is, all your photos are pretty much symmetrical and evenly spaced, mine is very haphazardly organized... I usually just put things up as they come and don't really care for organization as long as everything is up there lol. I really respect the amount of effort you put into making your wall look really nice. Stay nostalgic, keep the memories, it really makes life worth living if you can look back and remember the good times. 😁
ReplyDeleteHello, Shari! It seems like quite a few of us share a similar aesthetic to when we were 13! (Thanks, Romir for confirming that multiple people have this trait). I’m not a big Polaroid or just a picture fan in general, but I can understand where you’re coming from, friends and precious memories should be remembered in some way, and photos are definitely a good way of making sure they last forever! I love how you described all the different types of photos you have on your wall, it really emphasises how your photo wall is a collection of all sorts of memories, good and bad. I was impressed by your photo of your photo wall, it really screams “wall” due to how many photos you have collected on it.
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