I have a tendency to buy quirky garments at thrift stores, only to re-donate them months later and purchase replacements which may or may not be consigned to the same fate. Last night as I was folding freshly washed t-shirts, I began thinking about the history of objects as they pass from one person to another.

A shirt is purchased at a trendy secondhand shop in Pennsylvania. Its novelty appeal for having a foreign-language slogan screen-printed on the front saves it from the purge when I move to Maryland, and it is packed away in a white trash bag labeled “summer clothes.” Later, I realize I have not worn it in months and place in the Free Box at work [http://www.greaterhomewood.org/, wishing it well in a new home.

I'm not sure if someone adopted it at work or if it was taken to the Goodwill when the Free Box got too full. I'm also not sure what path the shirt took to reach me at The Attic, where I purchased it for more than it was probably worth.

Years ago, I explored this idea with a camera. I had just visited a website which I cannot locate now, but was similar in spirit to Book Crossing. Disposable cameras were released into the wild and passed from person to person, with each taking one frame before sending the camera on its way. When a roll was finished, the camera would be mailed back to the artists, if they called themselves that, and the roll was posted on the website.

At age 17 I was even then a lover of words and images, so I began a similar project of my own. In a box tagged with return postage, I placed a disposable camera and a reporter's notebook with specific instructions: take a picture of something very important to you, record the frame number, and write a few words about what the photo was about and why you had chosen that subject for your single frame on this communal roll.

My plan was to present photos and stories together somehow, weaving together a collective tale of scenes, memories, snippets of life experiences. I was prepared to wait for up to 4 years -- I had learned to expect as much from the original website, which listed cameras as being in the wild for 2-4 years on average. My first person was chosen carefully: a coworker at the grocery store where I earned my gas money, one of the quintessential aging ladies behind the service desk, the glue that holds together the front end. I trusted her and knew her well enough to explain my project without awkwardness, but I knew the box would not cross my path before its due.

More than 6 years later, I still think of that box from time to time. Where is it? Did someone open the gift early, developing the pictures themselves in selfish curiosity? Is the box resting in a closet somewhere, the pictures screaming to escape the confines of their shell? Whose closet? Is it still in Pennsylvania? I don't remember the camera often, but when I do, these questions burn in my mind.

Perhaps I should try again, but what caused my experiment to fail the first time? Perhaps it would help to establish a home on the web for my traveling camera, allowing recipients to log its progress from place to place. Perhaps now that I know how to conduct myself like a professional artist and make a project look legitimate, people would feel more accountable when they received the camera.

Or maybe the project could take a different form. I could use it as a study of my workplace, or the seventh graders at the school where I work. People connected by an office, a school, a block, could spin a collaborative story, capture places that had impacted them in their neighborhood. 36 sets of hands could trigger the shutter, and the film would return to me wrapped in plastic and cardboard. Finally, and object that is able to recite its history, its path.

This could be the community project I've been itching to start. It wouldn't be too intensive, so I could start it before moving to Baltimore and before I truly feel I have the time to give to a major project. Over the next couple weeks I will roll this over in my mind a few times. Maybe the project that had me so fascinated hopeful as a 17-year-old kid will be dredged up and resuscitated after all.