Leica R8, 28 mm Elmarit-R, Ilford HP5+, Kodak D76 1+1.
Blind to what we might otherwise have been /
“Whatever fate sends us quickly becomes us and we grow blind to what we might otherwise have been. And how else should it be? If we could see ourselves as capable of being different, then how resentful, or else in the opposite case how fearful that would leave us!”
Self-portrait in the bathroom mirror /
Leica R3, 50 mm Summicron, Ilford HP5+, Kodak D76 1+1.
The world of his longing made real /
“Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be. In this story he will be happy. What’s wrong with this story?
You tell me.
What is wrong with this story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of. Do you believe that?
…
Some men get what they want.
No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all.”
Traffic/Human desire/What the hard machine can do to the soft /
“Four times in the last few days I have sat tight in the car, gridlocked under the low sun, with no way out, while jagged figures discover what the hard machine can do to the soft: what the hood of the car can do to the human nose and mouth, what the tyre-iron can do to the back of the human head. Traffic is a contest of human desire, a waiting game of human desire. You want to go there. I want to go here. And, just recently, something has gone wrong with traffic. Something has gone wrong with human desire.
I don’t get it. No — I do! Suddenly I do, though there’s no real reason (is there?) why anybody else should. In traffic, now, we are using up each other’s time, each other’s lives. We are using up each other’s lives.”