The Lizard of Destiny

 

As August 9th inches forward, it seems the fates have conspired to test me by finding things to go wrong. It doesn’t bear repeating all of them, but probably the one that was worst was a few days ago I broke my camera.

My camera isn’t just a piece of equipment to me. My camera brought be solace during the early days of my separation when I first moved to Susanville. Behind the lens was the one way I could make sense of the world. It gave me a new perspective, a new way of looking at things that transferred itself out into the rest of my life.

My camera traveled with me throughout Southeast Asia with me, recording ruby miners in Vietnam, zircon mines in Cambodia, jade in northern China. A shaman in Burma.  My camera went with me to Italy and captured fishermen on the Adriatic Sea and a young girl with red hair and a painted face in London. In Nevada it helped me chronicle the lives of inmates who trained wild horses.

I assumed it would go with me to India.

Last week I returned home after my English class had met for a field trip downtown. I had taken my camera to record the day. I parked my truck, and there on a rock sat a lizard sunning itself. So I grabbed my camera--a canon rebel--to take a closeup. I wasn’t paying attention; I was focused on the lizard when I tripped on a rock and went down, the camera between me and the rock. It shattered. The memory card stuck, and I felt my stomach lurch and my heart drop.

It’s not the lizard’s fault. How quickly one step can change things.