The Photographer.

I met an old man at a tram stop last week, Friday, my last day of work.

I got electrocuted, it was their fault.

The old man and I sat on the aluminium seat at opposite ends, I didn't think we'd speak until we did. He mentioned something about the frequency of trams, not in an acoustic sense, but in an "I hope I get to work on time" sense.

I did, in case you were wondering.

The conversation went to politics, as it often does with old men, and I asked him what his trade was, what he did for work.

He said he was a photographer.

I've always admired photographers. I learned the rules in design school, but never connected to them. My breath is always taken by good cinematography, I think they have magic eyes. And photographers too, how they see frames hanging in the air where we just see the ocean, the sky, a tree in front of it.

Even those Real Estate liars who make small damp houses look like Caribbean Hotels, they've got the eye, they just use it for evil. Printing money with their retinas, swapping promise for currency, termites wait on the periphery.

And so I respected this old man, he was one of the few- a visionary, a recorder of history. I listened to his words, and balanced them out carefully. And I found they allied themselves with my own, which silently pleased me.

And so he asked me, "Would you like to see one?", and I said "Sure."

And he told me to close my eyes, which seemed odd for a photograph, but maybe he was part-showman as well. Maybe he relished the big reveal, like those people in home makeover programmes do, or TV shows about previously fat people.

So I closed my eyes, and I left the grey Melbourne morning, and entered the warm, padded darkness of the inside of my skull. Blood pulsed around me in its tunnels. His voice spoke, and it said:

"There is sand in his boots, under the straps of his helmet. His eyes are glassy with tears he can't show, and all he wants is to hold her again."

And then "Would you like another?"

"Yes", I thought I really would.

"The soft blossoms are lit from behind by the blue sky, glowing pink like a freshly rinsed newborn. Their fragile faces wave to the breeze."

And I basked in it...the gentle spring, warmed by the sun, cooled by a soft wave of air sporadically, I'd never heard birdsong in a photograph before.

I turned to ask what he meant by all this, but when I opened my eyes he was gone.

And in his place was a photograph, of me, eyes closed, smiling in a tram stop in the rain.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.