The day was perfect the first time I photoleaped. Maybe that’s why I never hesitated to do it again. And again.
I was eleven and the photog was younger than I was, a cousin I had never met. The back of the picture said “Summer 1981.” It was taken at some swimming place: a pool or pond or small lake …. The simple joy of a summer afternoon. Parents close but not too close. And me, living and watching someone’s else’s past life.
I was remembering that moment as I walked in the door.
Rachel had already started dinner. I could see that she was pissed. Probably at me. She was “angry- chopping” the carrots. I washed the lettuce, peeled the potatoes and was crushing garlic before she spoke to me.
“When were you going to tell me?”
I was pretty sure what she was talking about, so “tell you what?” was not going to fly. The only thing that was going to attain any altitude in this conversation was the truth. Shit.
“I was going to tell you tonight at dinner. And not because you just asked me. Because that is when I was going to tell you.”
She took the answer as a reason to quietly finish preparing the dinner as quickly as possible. I had to work to keep up. I turned on the radio which both diffused the tension and underscored it.
Rachel allowed us to serve and eat a couple of bites before she smiled and looked at me. Or through me. No definitely into me.
“The Agency wants me to do an extended leap.” I paused, trying to gauge how much she actually knew. But she was having none of it.
“You must know that I know that. What I don’t know is the reason why you received a message on our home machine this evening asking what time you wanted to be picked up tomorrow?
Because surely you told them you could not go now. Most certainly you explained that you were leaving on Saturday for the mountains. You must have reminded them that this vacation time had already been approved! So my question is: what the hell are you doing?”
What the hell was I doing?
The truth was that they had asked and I had not told them I couldn’t go. I had not outlined the trip to the mountains and I had not reminded them that my vacation had been approved. I had simply said “Ok.”
I was screwing up our relationship and I really didn’t know why. I wanted to get up to the lake. I wanted to go with Rachel. Yet when asked to leap into a client’s distant past I just said yes.
Rachel suggested that I see someone. That my photoleaping was becoming obsessive. I knew it could happen. I had seen it. I told her I would. I did not intend to.
Experienced Leapers know how to control a situation and leave the photog unharmed. And I was. Am. An experienced Leaper.
I can look back and tell myself that I hadn’t researched enough, that I was less experienced than I thought, that I did not know enough to control my Photog.
I can tell myself a great number of things. What I cannot tell myself is that it did not happen.
Sarah was lost because I did nothing.
The key to responsible photoleaping is to stay aware enough not to interfere with the photog – the person in the photo- their life but control them enough to get the intel you’ve been paid to collect. Go too deeply into your photog’s persona and you can really screw them up. As well as yourself. That is why everyone is leaped into before they go solo. It is a weird experience. Just about anyone can handle it once or maybe twice. Sometimes if you need to get a lot of information about a client’s past, you have to photoleap into everyone in the picture. It’s a lot of work just to let some client know that their great great whatever was or was not a sailor or servant or thief or teacher.
Sarah.
The alley was small and dark and I was whistling as I walked through it. My photog was young and strong and handsome. Just like I like them. A girl of about six ran up to him and asked for some help. “ I have somewhere to be right now,” I nudged out of my photog. She grabbed my sleeve and looked right up at me. Did my photog know her? He started to bend down to talk to her but I nudged him away. How could I know it was Sarah? She was looking at me. Me. Not the photog. She was taken in that alley. Lost. From her own present.
That is the truth that keeps me leaping. Again and again.
Written by Tammi Doyle