The Razor's Edge

I have no sense of where to begin today. I keep getting close to something that remains just beyond my grasp, that keeps eluding me though I get just this close. I'm just waiting to turn the corner and dreading that I won't be able to.

I love to photograph corners, people walking along the wall of a building just before a cross street or an alleyway, something there they do not yet realize. It make me (and I hope the viewer) feel omniscient, or gives just a sense of it, anyway. That is why we like children, isn't it? Because we feel a little omniscience? Because we can solve most of their problems? Or is it that they are all cartilage and so little bone?

I feel pensive as the girl in the photograph. Today would be right for a few drams of absinthe, I think, though I've never actually consumed the stuff. But they day suggests it. No beginning, no ending. It is all middle today and I would like to watch it pass.

It is merely a reaction, I am sure, to wishing to turn that corner, wishing to grab the ring and win the prize, a reaction to being so close and knowing that most of the effort is still before you. Me. It is like that when climbing very high mountains. The last part is devastating. It is like that with everything really, isn't it? Eighty percent is easy. You feel yourself worthy at ninety percent. But you know you must be willing to chance it all for the last little bit, a finger or a toe or an entire life, and it is that last part that causes people to turn around, to settle for much of what they wanted, to go back. You must get close to Shiva if you want that last bit.

I am surprised by how much I like today's photograph. It reminds me of something. I like that the bottoms of her feet are dirty. I will have to wash my studio floors, I think. But it is just what the photo needed. Kiki's Paris. Montmartre. The Razor's Edge.