I’m a shut-in nearly. Perhaps I exist only by these pictures and these words.

A camera is a barrier to seeing. I’ve heard that smoking, hands in front of the face and the mouth, is meant to set up a wall to strangers. The photographer is a witness. The camera, the tool, blocks, stops off life just short of reality.

Rather than reveal, the camera, the images, the words, the fabric of the sentences are a wall. They don’t reveal. They stop. They block. And in the end they, after all, hide. Perhaps, as I hide with my dog in this space, I hide here too.

But a new thought has occurred to me. If I exist only by these words and these images, I am not blocking and stopping as with the witness. I am not revealing either, as with truth. I am creating. I am asserting my own existence.

So long as I write here, I exist. Have you seen me on the street? Have you seen me with my dog? Do you feel the life behind the door? Do you hear me inside here? No. Not if I only exist by these words, by these images.

If this is all true, then, as with an ended book, I will die with my last sentence. A whimpering death. No bang. I will not die, not even. Nothing so spectacular. I will cease to exist which is different. I could commit suicide right here. I just have to stop. No more words. This sentence right here could be my last breath. Or this one. Or this one. I don’t want to end.

Or perhaps existence is futile; we struggle to survive only by instinct. Another word. Another breath. Another word. Do I end here? Do I end here? Here?

SS