i keep seeing myself in pictures. not me, but someone that could have been me. the version that resembles me are engaged with other people i did not know but when i look at the people i know them. i know their situation. i know the frustration the people feel walking to and from home and work or when they have no one to talk to at a dinner party. i know their insecurity, their lack of awareness or their confidence. i can feel their concerns, i know that the smile on their face is simply a facade put on for others, that they worry about the end and even the present. the rich, the poor, they all worry. but as the camera clicks they put on a smile. and at times alone or with others they smile again, the real smile, the reason we keep at this life.

the people standing around in those photos are posing and sometimes caught off guard. frozen in time, did they know i would look at them…did i know i would write this? layers upon layers of interaction and impossible moments keep happening in our lives. little to surprise us in the abundance of things out there, there to consume our time and energy. layers of comments, photos, feelings and functions as well as times and places to be. within a crowded restaurant, i could be at any other table or within a series of photos, i could have been anyone of them.

i cross from middle-age to some other age. i make a new friend and become a grandfather or a success at this and a failure at another. i have forgetten a name but remember a song, ill exercise one day and sleep late into another. i appear in a photo, it is not me, but it could have been. either way i know that pose, i know that feeling and i know that look. that air of belonging but also not, that feeling of being grounded for a moment, at the right place in the wrong time. for a moment, a quick and fleeting moment.