Is she breathing?

So I saw a documentary on Dorothea Lange in class last year, and in it, she said, “You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.”

I’ve always meant to put my camera around my neck along with my putting on my flip-flops. I start out doing it, and then one day I forget, and it’s all over. But because I’m trying to post a new picture every day—and because I don’t have time every day to go out specifically with the purpose of taking pictures—I realized that carrying my camera was the only way to do it.

And so, today, I was in Summerland (the city of 1,545 down the coast from Santa Barbara, not the canceled WB series starring that girl from Full House) at the going-out-of-business Summerland Market picking up a Diet Coke (and, full disclosure, a Hershey’s bar) and I saw the unofficial guardian of the market, the owners’ ancient dog, whose name I’ve never really learned, asleep in her bed, wearing a sweater, her stuffed elephant by her side. I walked around taking pictures of this dog for a few minutes, sometimes getting within 5 or 6 feet of her, and she never woke up.

She was breathing—I checked.

Copyright © 2007 Liz Kuball