It's only a camera...right?

I have grown too attached to my shiny toys that I have grown to love over the years, usually any word with apple or canon is pretty much at the top of my possession list. This past weekend I went to the beach with some friends and the seriously the weather couldn't of been better if I had painted it myself. Gray skies, big waves and rain. While I was sitting in my water with my friends all i could think of was, fred go get your camera this is awesome. just do it. nike. Ok, kidding about the nike, but seriously I had the urge and usually I would've ignored it but I just couldn't, I thought how mad I would be if I never tried. So I get my camera and I bring it into the water, the water is about mid stomach level which I thought wasn't bad, but the waves were high, I'm busy taking pictures, some friends are yelling at me to go back to the beach, and others are just laughing along. I wish I could've described what I saw in the lens at that time, it was better than any picture I could've taken, it was an experience that I had when I looked through the lens, so I started snapping away thinking in my head "this is awesome!" couple drops of water here and there, what a great idea.... then my friends start yelling..."WAVE!! GET OUT!! RUN!!!" I look, sure enough a big wave is coming...I start running back but then I remember if I get caught where the waves break, I'm a goner I need to attack the wave before it breaks...so I turn around and jump the wave, the only thing above the water was my hand with my camera....at this point I gotta say I felt pretty invincible. I can jump these waves easy... uh oh spoke too soon, just as I get cocky in my wave jumping abilities... I see a huge wave...something in my stomach told me it was it... like I knew this was the wave to take me under...so I jumped, hand above the water..."safe, thank you Jesus" right when the wave passes, I get pulled in the undercurrent and lose my footing and fall in. Just like that. I popped up as quickly as possible as if to somehow hope that the 5 second rule of foods would some how relate itself to water and cameras. The first thing I saw was water in my lcd...I tried to wipe it away...but i couldn't...then my friends say, DUDE, is it ok?? is it broken? nah, it's cool, it's fine... yeah it's totally fine, i respond, I didn't want to put a damper on the mood so I just put on my happy face and walked back to the shore...the funny thing is...I wasn't mad, I was actually ok. I was glad that for the first time, I had kind of acted like a real artist. I did because I wanted to, and more than the final product I went through an experience, Art isn't just a finished product you show ppl so they can OOO and AHHH, it's the process sometimes you go through, even if none of the pictures would have come out, I would've been ok, now, am I happy the pictures still came out? of course! I now kind of understand what my teacher would say, he says sometimes he leaves his house deliberately without film and just takes pictures...the memories that he shoots, the frames that he sees stay with him, it's not for the finished picture but for the experience of making the picture. And besides...it's only a camera...it's not like I can take it with me to heaven... so with that..i present to you some pictures...some final words from my camera before it decided to drown, maybe forced upon itself but nevertheless, it's dead and gone.