Twenty-Five
How do I tell you about choices. You have them always, and make them with and without thought. Everything and everyone feels just right or not at all and you either go with it or not. It feels ok to wake up with the sun early, or with the sun late.
I sit down, and contemplate the beauty of skin in the light, and I think briefly about the pile of things that I’ve done wrong. I don’t reflect because really all I care about in this moment is just how I want to frame this unexpected beauty. I feel distracted by some small, nameless memory…a loss, a reflection, a missing piece….and I wonder as I make these pictures about light and movement and shades. I think about Jack Kerouac a bit and try hard to move fast so as not to lose these moments in the sun.
I remember what it was like before I had an understanding about what true regret feels like, and how it felt going to sleep at night with a weightless head. Always assuming that it would remain so.
How do I say that the decisions now can forever alter everything. Skin and the sun will never be the same, revised as each long day passes on the streets of whatever new city, and with my experiences I understand that I may return in a year or more and find that skin in an accelerated gestation between birth and old age, and find myself remembering its former purity.
SUZANNE STEIN PHOTOGRAPHY 