Punam Bean Photography (observations)

6 Years ago, at this very moment, I was reeling.

A bright and shiny man leaped across a table and kissed me. It was our first kiss, and as I gazed into his eyes, it was as if I was seeing another person for the first time. I came home, and I wrote this.

I’m not quite sure I have it in me to explain the evnts of the day, but it was culminated in sitting in the rain and not caring because there was a moment that happened. By all efforts it would not be disturbed because the channel of intesity between us was so thick it could not be dislodged or uprooted by petty rain on a summer night, or by the prospect of eventually having to carry my tired ass home, or by my withering body pulsating with the remnants of an abnormally long and hard day of work, or by anything… sitting there on the pier, there was a mysterious train of thought that led to our indefinite presence there, falling asleep, trying to delay the moment… and the thing in me that I have programmed is trying with all it’s might to belittle everything, to make it seem foolish, but the fact is that I wanted to sit there until the sun came out just as much as I was under the impression that he was. Strangely though, the sun coming out would have not made it any easier to decide when the moment would take hold of us, and break apart the threads that binded us together so suddenly and shockingly… I said wierd, but a wierd wierd… like I wasn’t uncomfortable, but I felt strange and strangely familiar. Like I knew his face from somewhere… like I could sit with him, after a marathon of intesity – we were panting from the effortlessness and the suddenness, just coming down as if we had stopped running, with a new something forged that means that we have connected.  It was as if Someone had pulled me up to a new plane, as if all I needed was that small effort to get me there, and I stood atop this new cliff I’ve been trying so hard to reach, but so much like its just right there, that when I stood on top, I saw manhattan from queens on a hazy monday morning, as the pillars decended into the sky like olympus, and everything was quiet. And it was peaceful and comfortable and strangely unsatisfying. Because all roads lead to an end. because I’ve hit this wall. Because I built the wall. Because I am scared and I think it may be so much so that I don’t even know how scared I am, nor will I until some kind of moment of truth comes.

I was scared. I was never lucky in love, and I had never even had a boyfriend before. There were so many trials and tribulations leading up to that moment, that I felt ruined for happiness. I was unsteady, and he steadied me. I felt unloved, and he loved me. It literally felt like a piece of me was missing, and here I found the very most perfect piece to fill me – found it in Queens of all places.

I wrote this in my journal the evening I came home, after I met the tall, strapping and handsome man I would be engaged to in just a few short months, who would be the inspiration for my whole career as a wedding photographer, who I would travel the world with, who would make me into the best person I could possibly be. Our relationship has never been easy, but it has always felt like we were meant to be. At the end of the day, we found each other, and we didn’t waste any time. I’m glad we didn’t. I’m glad we jumped without looking. It’s been six years, which for some reason feels like an especially important milestone to me, and I keep falling in love all over again.