EDITH SAYLOR STYLE: PHOTOGRAPH

You know those still frame pictures in your mind that you keep forever? Something that happened to you, something you saw, something you felt, that was so great it will stay with you always, like a photo reel of all the best things you were given while you were on Earth? When I saw this editorial of Barbora Pracharova by Waldemar Hansson for Kurv Magazine, the memory of one of mine came rushing back.

I was in Austria for the first time. We had driven there from Budapest (rough) arriving late (exhausted). I assumed my boyfriend would be in no mood for anything but sleep, but when I stepped out of the shower, he was gone and my phone was ringing. I answered to his voice telling me to throw on a dress and hurry down to the lobby. A mystery metro ride later, we were literally running as fast as we could across a rainy foreign street. I couldn't read the traffic signs and was nearly killed by a speeding car until he yanked me off of my stilettos onto the sidewalk in front of...

The Vienna State Opera House.

I had never been to the opera, and had been dying, absolutely dying, to go ever since I was a little girl... especially in Vienna. But it was opening night of Onegin, the show had begun, and tickets were sold out. Not to be deterred, my boyfriend hurriedly negotiated with every slightly English-speaking staff member until we were shown to box seats. When the usher's white glove peeled away the velvet curtain, and I had tippy-toed far enough to see over the gilded railing of the balcony...

that was my - click - photo forever.

Every precious moment I had since childhood of dancing across a spotlit stage, playing a concert on my Parisian violin, stitching a bead onto a Broadway costume, attending the theatre with my now-gone aunt, traveling to see the beauty I had only read of in books, welled up in my throat and stung at my eyes.

And I will never, ever forget that as long as I live.

Photo: Taken by me from our box at the Vienna State Opera House

Hansson's photographs were taken in a beautiful opera house like the one where I first watched Onegin.

Especially poignant is that the series is entitled "The Heart Is a Rebel", as mine very much is.

But it doesn't matter, because it will still always remember the way it felt in my chest when I first peered over that balcony in Vienna, and click... forever.