from A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

I didn't see myself spending the rest of my days at that bend in the river, like Mahesh and the others. In my own mind I separated myself from them. I still thought of myself as a man just passing through. But where was the good place? I couldn't say. I never thought constructively about it. I was just waiting for some illumination to come to me, to guide me to the good place and the "life" I was still waiting for.

walking without mirrors

Visiting sand dunes along the North Coast. Sedge, lupine, coyote bush. We walked with pure motion, forward, until we saw the waves. All echo. Neither of us said much. The sounds were open, in flight. Words hadn't been there for a while.

When I look at photographs, I try to see myself in every face. It makes them into mirrors. Otherwise they would be free to speak their own mind, or might even catch up a tune carried on in another room. Soliloquy, harmony, echo. Often, I want something from them. I want to know how it is to be seen.

It's an old-fashioned word. Photo-graph. Something mechanical we hammered together with zest and a sense of providing for the future of the lexicon. So we will remember how it was when it has inevitably passed.

A bird in a branch, its wing flashes the same color as his jacket. We kept moving.