Pictures

Pictures are biased representations of reality, the substitutes of lost memories. A cheap attempt, a briefly cheap one, to reproduce what we try not to forget, or what we have already forgotten. An attempt to make things better, happier, sunnier, prettier. A faint unsuccessful attempt to make ourselves believe that those pictures are reality and that reality is ours and that we are someone else happier and funnier and smiling who has never seen the rain. Let the others raise an eyebrow with jealousy and envy us for our happiness. So perfect that we are.

How I wished I were you, with that bright smile on your face, you, so pretty and happy and perfect and shiny.

Pictures, then, pictures are the construction of a new reality, rather than the representation of an old one. The capturing of a single instant from a single perspective by a single eye at a particular location. And the grimace, not even real. One’s always smiling for pictures, no good sample of reality. I’ve always hated pictures myself, like you lose the present moment in an attempt to try and have a written memory, a fake one, for the future. Like you miss up on the present for the future, for a future constructed upon the past, a fake one. No good future can be constructed upon a fake past. So far away that it will be.

How you wished you were me, with all those sunny places and people, hat on the head, hand in hand, so happy that I was.

Pictures, after all, pictures are a substitute for relevance. The image of all those things for which we need an image, a written one. For otherwise one would not remember them. Pictures, then, pictures are a substitute for relevance. Either something is relevant or you’d better take a picture, not that it faints with time and you lose yourself on the way. The concretion of abstract thoughts in a faint fake attempt to tell yourself that the things you have seen and the people you have met and the places you have been to are relevant. If they were, mind you, if they were your memory would keep them. No need for paper.Words and thoughts and times and spaces written on paper.

How she wished she were I, with a real past and no troubled future and no need to lie to herself. Handkerchief in the hand, green cheek, pictures in the bin.

Door shut, paper red. It will be sunny out there.