A Day of Photographing Things That Won't Stay This Way

Saturday. The sun came up early and the neighbour's tin roof flashed into my window from six o'clock. Before leaving the house I wrote two rules on a sticky note: ask before photographing a person, and never lift the phone while riding. Then one more line: no shot has to be good.

6:40. The usual café at the end of the street was already open. The owner wiped a table and asked "the usual?", and I nodded. The iced milk coffee came, the spoon clinking, the ice still crackling. I sat in the red plastic chair in the corner, the one with a leg wrapped in black tape, the one I've sat in for three years without ever really looking at. Today I looked: the tape had yellowed, the edge was peeling, a thin layer of dust clung to it. I took one picture. Slightly crooked. I let it stay crooked.

8:15. The ceiling fan at home has clattered since the day I moved in. I stood under it and filmed ten seconds with the lens pointed up. A blurry clip, only spinning blades and an even drone. I asked myself, "Why do I want to keep this sound?" And answered, "Because it's the first thing I've heard every morning for three years." Then I thought one more thing I didn't want to think: one day it will go silent, or I'll be somewhere else. I let that thought stand there and didn't add anything to it.

10:05. The sugarcane woman outside the primary school gate was pressing her first batch. The sharp sweet smell of crushed cane reached all the way to the curb.

"Can I photograph your hands pressing the cane?"

"What for? I'm old."

"I think your hands look good doing it."

"No, take the cart instead. My hands are a mess."

I photographed the cart. The press had an electric cord wrapped in tape, two stacks of plastic cups upside down, a streak of sun across the steel. She isn't in the picture. I felt a small pang, and then felt that this was right too.

12:40. I sat on a stone bench under a tree, my iced cane juice still untouched. For twenty minutes I'd been fiddling to find an angle where it "looked right." The ice had melted, the cup was sweating, a drop ran down my wrist. I hadn't taken a single sip. Sitting there I suddenly felt strange: the phone was turning me into someone standing outside my own glass of juice. I put it face down on the bench. Took a sip. Sweet, cold, a little sharp at the back of the throat. By the second sip I could hear kids spilling out of the school gate.

15:30. Afternoon rain. I stood under the awning of a corner shop and photographed nothing. Some things can't be photographed: the smell of wet earth rising off the curb, the squelch of a child's plastic sandals running past, the shop owner pulling a tarp down over her goods. I watched until the kid disappeared around the corner.

20:30. Looking through the pictures in bed. The red chair, crooked. The cane cart, a little shaky. Ten seconds of fan. None of them look like it did then. The chair in the photo looks ordinary. But when I played the fan back I felt a small sting: now it's only a sound, and back then it came with a whole morning.

23:00. The fan is still going. I lie here listening, and this time I'm not recording.

I didn't photograph to keep anything. I only understood that today, and I'll probably forget it by tomorrow. The photo was an excuse to stop and look for one second longer. Pictures will fade, the chair will be replaced, the cane woman may move her stall. Whether that one second of real looking happens or not is up to me.

If looking closely at familiar things leaves you sadder than lighter, don't push yourself to keep going. And if sadness or an empty feeling goes on for weeks and affects your sleep or daily life, talk to someone trained to help. You don't have to wait until it gets heavier.