November 24th, 2022 from 5:34 PM to 6:07 PM PST
apart from “ball” on November 22nd, 2022 at 1:20 PM PST
and “shades” on December 5th, 2022 at 6:45 PM PST
It’s been two years since I took these photographs, and whatever I can remember from that window of time is too worthy of skepticism to warrant any narrative. Days like this one, when there is no intensity of thought or desire, only a pleasant admiration of the world, nothing much is really remembered, only moments recalled in pictures.
I know then I was with my family, probably anticipating food, enjoying the Viking twilight as my two small left toes went numb and the grandchildren rushed ahead of me. We trailed the pavement that wrapped itself around Commonwealth Lake, past the search party of emerald wigeons that patted the blades of grass with their webbed feet in search of food. Around the corner there stretched humble bridges and extended wooden boardwalks occupied by hobby fishermen. In hidden bush shelters was the domain of the nephews, the invading nutria sheltering amongst their foliage. I was maybe thinking about my future, feeling love for those around me, jousting thoughts of death as some do when they watch the descending sunset. I look at these photos now and I think similar things, but in abstraction, on the other side of a one-way mirror.
There’s a sensation that I often feel in the midst of recording sound or video; a glee in my mostly permanent etching of time, but also a greater fear in anticipating its end. I become aware of my future-self listening to this recording, awaiting the second that I end it, when he has run out of footage to watch and the bridge between us is cut. Sometimes, after I have recorded a video and I press stop, I take note of everything around me, knowing that I am existing in a space beyond a border of my later memory, a space that a moment ago was fixed and eternal and is now active and transient. I’m a little sad to think that the me that is here now is vulnerable again, already dead in the future. But I am also liberated, like a child no longer under surveillance.
As we return home, I look ahead to my family trekking the sidewalk that trails up the hill to my parent’s house, the headlights of a passing car outlining their shapes in bold yellow. I steal the moment selfishly for myself and no one else, not even me.