Some people watch the world through a viewfinder as though light and framing can focus them in the right direction, or illuminate a moment worth preserving, a moment to be doctored later for contrast and content, erasing any smudges or unsightly lines, brightening the colors, whitening the smiles, making the backgrounds more pleasurable and interesting.
Pictures lie.
It begins with the image of a memory. Awards day at the office like a picture day at school. Three shots, feet on the green line, turn toward the light, face the camera, adjust your glasses, tilt your head, chin down, a little more to the left, that's it (flash)
When I leaf through the snapshots of my past, I wonder, was I ever that young? That thin? That happy? Did I really have that much hair? Who are these strangers whose holiday smiles mask the routine hell of day to day. Each forced grin more like a grimace, each picture consuming a little more of my soul leaving it hollow, empty, and easily possessed.
A personal paparazzi pursues me through the pages. Their shutters scissor shut, snick, snick, snick, as they cut away snippets of my life, trimming the pieces to a puzzle where more are lost than found. Each burst of light, each high pitched whine as the flash recharges, each whir of advancing film is like the aftermath of a crime scene that sends me through a flashback.
I stare into a portal to madness like a pool of still water, the original looking glass polished mirror smooth. Behind the lens is a world where black becomes white, up becomes down, sanity insane. If I stare too long, I know I will become unbalanced, but my feet are paralyzed knowing one misstep will send me crashing headlong into the shards that bleed me like a sacrifice. My blood strengthens the demons who howl for my return. Like cats they lick my wounds, feeding instead of cleansing with the agony of their tongues. I am devoured while these dark and hungry godlings mew for more.
Shades tear my clothes, nick my skin, alternately cajoling and threatening, their arguments hooking into my head like finely sharpened, crooked knives. The demons are a legion, united in a single purpose, to return me to the world into which I was born through coercion or deceit. Their voices are a sirens' song calling me home, promising this time I will play Odysseus, revealing glimpses of a glorious return through infectious dreams and visions, neglecting the decadal nature of the journey. Returning to that world would be like re-entering an inferno with no Persephone to rescue and no Virgil to guide me home.
As reality returns, I close the cover on the past, returning dark thoughts to a dark room, sealing the demons within their tomb. The afterimage fades to a still life, memories safely preserved in silver shades of gray, drained of color like the missing portions of my soul.
© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III
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