I’m not talking about our bodies reaction to being cold. I’m talking about our emotional response to stimuli. Like the tremor we get when we hear a good piece of music or the goose bumps we get when we watch a particularly moving scene in a film.
For me I always get that feeling when I watch Finding Nemo not only the opening music but one particular scene always gets me; when Nigel is telling Nemo and the rest of the tank fish about Marlin’s journey across the ocean to find his son. Emotion seems to catch in my chest and make it feel heavy yet at the same time elated.
More recently I experienced a different kind of shiver. Over the British bank holiday weekend I travelled to Nice in the South of France. Walking along the promenade I saw it. The memorial for those killed in the Bastille Day Massacre. It wasn’t just seeing the candles and the flowers it was the teddy bears that had been put out to mourn the children who had also suffered a terrible fate that night.
Actually standing in the exact spot where something so horrific happened was harrowing. It’s hard to find any words to describe the feeling of being there. My heart goes out to those who were there that night and to those who lost relatives and friends.
I couldn’t take pictures of the scene, for me it just didn’t feel appropriate.
I had the same feeling when visiting Ground Zero in Manhattan. The silence that filed
the area nothing can describe it. Of this I did capture a few images; around the infinity pools the names of those that lost their lives were engraved. In some of these names a single white rose would reside.
I just remember the shiver that overcame me when the magnitude of these two atrocities hit me. The tears I shed for people I’ll never know. It’s hard to comprehend.
Standisms: life through my eyes 