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us. Our starkly outlined silhouettes whipped by in front of us again and again until we reached the other side, turned the corner, and descended into darkness. You could straddle a cycle right now, wait until sunset, and experience those leaping shadows on that same bridge. It might take your breath away. It might do nothing at all. But, for me, the surreal phenomena of watching ourselves repeatedly zoom away as our shadows were ripped by momentum and optics from our booted heels, flying away together into the night, made me cry with an inexplicable feeling of loss and longing. Maybe I somehow knew, even then, long before trying to make anything “work,” that our fleeing shadows represented the impossible dreams that would leave us. Maybe I understood that shadows never lie, that shadow people never abandon one another, never pound their fists onto the kitchen counter in fits of marital rage, could never hurt a child.
The motorcycle was sold, eventually. It’s been a long time since I choked back tears on the back of a Honda, lifted that plastic facemask a crack to get a gulp of fresh air, just enough to stop myself from reaching out as my outlined existence raced by, from making a futile attempt to grab hold of a ghost. Thankfully, my shadow did return, if reluctantly, and I keep it close by now, most of the time. It occasionally slips toward the moonlit windowsill and hovers there while I lie dreaming, but it doesn’t get away for long. It makes just enough of a rustling noise, like fallen leaves blowing in the street to wake me. On those midnights, I sneak toward it stealthily and grab hold, keep it still while I stitch it, Peter Pan style, with a heavy steel needle and sturdy cotton thread, back onto my small, bare, twitching feet.
The word “photography” is derived from the Greek words for light and writing or drawing. To write with light is an attempt, I suppose, to net the soul of this life and the invisible fibers of our existence with shadows and illumination. Sometimes at night, I go for runs and walks alone in the city, looking for shadows to net with the camera obscura in my mind, indulging in the surreal, loosened world of lengthened light, double vision, and stretched reality. Chinese
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