Snapshots

Not everyone has the opportunity to be photographed at work. One of the parents of a junior class student has a new camera, and with permission from us and the other parents, has been whiling away the wait with shutter clicks.

In my desk based day jobs some daydreaming was inevitable. They were moments of retrieval: self-preservation. I would view my desk as a still life, see how all the greys of the table tops and old fat boxed computer screens were patterned in the shade of the office foliage, how futile the chain of coloured paperclips as perceived against the weight of in-tray contents. I would think up electronic responses that could never be writ, in case I pressed the irresistible Send. Inevitable, too, the gaze that drifted through the window out into blue or cloud or glare or stars or one's own reflection. In those in-trays lay so much that was nonsense and so much that was pitiful, regardless of the job. Generics and specifics, absorbed in my pauses, part of my experience, not part of me: not the vital core of me. No job should ask for your soul and neither should you give it. A vocation is a different thing: it is in your soul all ready, and merely needs to channel out. There are moments still when my mind is conjuring or capturing: when the scene is all art: I see concentration, uncomfortable effort: see the effort blossom towards mastery: observe the smile of achievement. In the midst of this, I am a portrait, a true image.