Dark and Life In Contrast

 My father gave me wondrous gifts wrapped in emptiness and loss. The pachinko game caught this teenage boy’s eye. Bright lights, clanging bells, silver balls bouncing off a thousand pins. Can’t tell you if I told him I wanted it once or a hundred times. My birthday came and with it came the pachinko game. A gift which brought hours of joy. Seeing the desire but not understanding the heart.

Pachinko is gaming at its core. Pulling on a lever shoots a metal ball into a field of pins. Much like pinball (except the Pachinko game stands upright) there are paths the ball bounces down; entering a cave where a little man stands at guard. Knocking him over sets off a mad clanging of bells followed by the sound of ten or twenty ball bearings crashing down a tube into the little ash-tray of winnings. A celebratory cacophony of clanking steel! In Korea you’d cash these winnings out with the house at the end of the night. In my house my friends and I kept a piece of paper where the highest score was scribbled in pen and taped to the door jamb. Hundreds of hours spent pulling that lever. Dad’s hand never touched the game.

The camera is awkwardly received. A gift more transactional than heartfelt. Motivated by a hidden heart. A gift for graduating high school. Hence this failure to receive love no matter how it came wrapped.

Taking pictures is as central to me as breathing. I carry around an inhaler for asthma attacks. I’m never without it. And never without a camera. Then the SLR (single lens reflex), now my Samsung. Photography was enjoyed by my father as well. Yet it was my cousin whom he took under his wing to teach photography on a field trip to a Sequoia National park. As if he were extending to me pieces of his heart then walling them off so they could not be accessed.

Like breathing in those gifts give life. In the stream of bouncing balls and clanging bells I spent hours thinking and meditating. When friends visited, we played the game. One person pulling the lever, leaving room for chatter. Pachinko was for a season; photography is for life.

Through this gift of a lens life is viewed differently. Nature and beauty in crisp contrast. Friends and family caught forever in different poses, stages of life in freeze frame. Millions of memories I’d have forgotten. These gifts are like a Cibachrome print. Dark and grey frame and saturate the picture. In contrast the rich colors of life; the cyan, magenta and yellow astonish with their richness. What a wondrous gift!

Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash