October weather at last. A blustery evening, damp and grey. Maybe it’s the remnants of a tropical storm. While running through the rainy dark, someone stepped in front of me and took my picture for no apparent reason. Maybe they needed a snapshot of a man lumbering into middle age.
Took my picture. Such an odd phrase, as if we carry a single image of ourselves with us like a rare object, something that can be snatched away. This line of thinking brought to mind a quote from Milan Kundera’s Immortality: “Even when I was a child, adults would ask me: little girl, may we take your picture? And then one day they stopped asking. The right of the camera was elevated above all other rights, and that changed everything.”
