Walking back toward the house, Brother Skunk remains silent, still subject to the residue of his anger and content to rest what remains him of his convalescent voice, while beside him deleted name continues to bear witness on photography.
Inspired by his recent reminiscences of one long-distant Christmas in New York, he had retrieved from its place of storage his father’s old Leica camera, punctuating this their last afternoon together with the taking of photographs, encouraging Skunk to do likewise until his eventual revelation that the camera contained no film.
deleted name (with uncharacteristic venom): Take my word for it, Skunk, photography is the motherfucking antichrist,
stopping to remove the empty camera from where it hung across his shoulder, and holding it up before him now by the strap as if examining the carcass of a vicious animal he had finally managed to trap and kill,
deleted name: the only thing photography can offer you is a series of stepping stones to the past, every one of them covered in wet leaves.
before inserting his arm again through the strap to resume walking.
Alongside, Skunk considers the haphazard nature of his own actual footing, limping over the uneven ground in his Levi’s boots, the Bazooka cane supporting him that much less than he would wish, aware as he is of his ankle’s ongoing, inevitable, slow-motion collapse.
deleted name: It will provide you just so minuscule a fragment of what it is you actually want to see that it might as well be completely abstract, and you scratching for sense in the microscopic grain of the film, in the thousandth thousandth of that one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second for which the shutter flexed open, the lens aperture measurable in literally millimetres.
his fingers surprised still at the fresh texture of beard growing upon his face.
deleted name: It’s two dimensional, that’s it, that’s all it is, a two dimensional attempt to represent life, and whatever else it is you’re looking for from it, well, that you’ll have to supply yourself because it will not support whatever weight you bring to bear upon it, it just can’t.
Pause.
deleted name: It can’t.
Aware he has again outpaced his guest, he turns and waits now for Skunk to catch him up,
deleted name (even as he speaks searching for and failing to locate that single exemplum as might prove him wrong): No-one ever looked at a photograph and thought about the future.
In his ongoing silence Brother Skunk sadly conjures up the printed ultrasound, and says nothing.
Later, upon further reflection and refinement, correcting himself, to himself,
deleted name: No-one ever looked at a photograph of themself and thought about the future.
and still he is wrong.
Inspired by his recent reminiscences of one long-distant Christmas in New York, he had retrieved from its place of storage his father’s old Leica camera, punctuating this their last afternoon together with the taking of photographs, encouraging Skunk to do likewise until his eventual revelation that the camera contained no film.
deleted name (with uncharacteristic venom): Take my word for it, Skunk, photography is the motherfucking antichrist,
stopping to remove the empty camera from where it hung across his shoulder, and holding it up before him now by the strap as if examining the carcass of a vicious animal he had finally managed to trap and kill,
deleted name: the only thing photography can offer you is a series of stepping stones to the past, every one of them covered in wet leaves.
before inserting his arm again through the strap to resume walking.
Alongside, Skunk considers the haphazard nature of his own actual footing, limping over the uneven ground in his Levi’s boots, the Bazooka cane supporting him that much less than he would wish, aware as he is of his ankle’s ongoing, inevitable, slow-motion collapse.
deleted name: It will provide you just so minuscule a fragment of what it is you actually want to see that it might as well be completely abstract, and you scratching for sense in the microscopic grain of the film, in the thousandth thousandth of that one hundred and twenty-fifth of a second for which the shutter flexed open, the lens aperture measurable in literally millimetres.
his fingers surprised still at the fresh texture of beard growing upon his face.
deleted name: It’s two dimensional, that’s it, that’s all it is, a two dimensional attempt to represent life, and whatever else it is you’re looking for from it, well, that you’ll have to supply yourself because it will not support whatever weight you bring to bear upon it, it just can’t.
Pause.
deleted name: It can’t.
Aware he has again outpaced his guest, he turns and waits now for Skunk to catch him up,
deleted name (even as he speaks searching for and failing to locate that single exemplum as might prove him wrong): No-one ever looked at a photograph and thought about the future.
In his ongoing silence Brother Skunk sadly conjures up the printed ultrasound, and says nothing.
Later, upon further reflection and refinement, correcting himself, to himself,
deleted name: No-one ever looked at a photograph of themself and thought about the future.
and still he is wrong.
