the photographer

Then trying to find words to describe the tent, some that are tolerable but they’re all disgusting. Even if they’re just regular words. Like white and.. No.

“Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships” she said; “it cannot occur in isolation.”

Here is where to contemplate whether to dissociate or joke about if she has not been to the woods yet or—borrowing internet speak—let it sink in.

The laptop screen goes black after a while and it’s black and shiny much like a mirror and he sees himself no sees the image he has gotten used to and knows resembles his appearance and fiddles with the idea that it is a stranger someone he has never met before and wonders who it is and how he got there and where he is going where all this is going and the answers there aren’t any only fantasies that aren’t constructive all the time but childish naive was the better word but it felt like too much of a word a word he didn’t fully comprehend and aren’t words nasty are they because they have meanings and fuzzy because the interpretations always seem to vary in all directions at different times and to all the different people with their backgrounds and previous experiences and oh I said that already and then after not touching the keyboard for a while the laptop screen goes black

Some days it isn’t until she stands by the front door that her belly starts to ache. She likes the surface though. It reminds her of a house she vaguely remembers, only she can’t quite place it. Teak, perhaps?

You know when you are moving through the land, your body feels good and step by step the terrain disappears under your feet and you feel like you could run like this halfway into forever and then you start noticing that you are being chased or followed by something or someone but there isn’t anyone there and you don’t know what or who it is, something or someone that is pulling you from behind, by the neck it seems, making each step increasingly difficult, pushing you down as one foot still moves in front of the other and you start feeling this brick of pain in your chest, tainted by fear but mostly pain, sorrow, and you cannot shake loose from it and you stop, turn around, asking, not immideately seeing any logical answers, start moving again and it or s/he still follows, still keeping a firm grip on your neck, and the trail continues, almost in a straight line it leads away from the cluster of houses and the people occupying them and further towards where there aren’t others, only land and sky that is about to change colours, and—perhaps—what or whoever it is that is following every step you take, weighing you down, by your neck?

For a moment I think I am in a different store, one I have never been in before, in an unknown city. Then I realize I can read the labels. It’s more disappointing than I would have expected.

She kisses me, I kiss her back. There is something not right about this but we keep at it. Perhaps it’s just me, no it can’t be. This should not be happening.

My feet are always wet when I wake up. After rain that is. The tent is rather filthy, I try to convince myself that it isn’t worth cleaning, that I should toss it.

The number of good people around is overwhelming. There is, somehow, nothing that can be done about it.