A thing that happens

There is a thing that happens in my head and heart when I see a particular kind of photograph, by a certain kind of person, of a certain kind of person, with a specific affect I can't describe.

Sometimes there is breeze in her hair, sometimes it is a field or a forest or a mountaintop or a European street or the back of a southern pick-up truck or a sweaty third-world backdrop. Sometimes a smile half-formed, sometimes a good dress, sometimes a casual sleeve. Sometimes his face is slack, like the photograph is beside the point and he doesn't even see the camera. Sometimes a twinge of self-awareness, sometimes a breathtaking candour. Sometimes a banal moment, an ankle, a wrist, an elbow, a spoon, crumbs on the table and on the plate and the corner of a crumpled something, maybe a napkin, or a newspaper, towel, shirt, or scrap paper. Scrap paper. Let's just call it scrap paper. It may as well be in all the photographs, standing in for creativity and recklessness or whatever else was making the air thick wherever that shutter clicked.

There are doodles behind these photos. Doodles, notes, post-its, plans, blueprints, rough drafts, I know, and I'd like to read them because all of it is worthwhile. There is a before and an after and the debris and preparation for either or both. But there is only ever one frame, one point on a line or a curve or a spine when something lands or hurts or makes you feel THERE. That. This.