Sepia Tones

01.23.19

There are pretty little things everywhere – the flicker of a candle in a lamplit room (a recurring image in my writings, a recurring image in my life), the smile of a friend when he laughs at my jokes, the tender way a girl might tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear and turn to face the sunlight.

I’m left wistful and wondering in a quiet mood that softens everything in sepia tones– in calm beiges and ochres and pale yellows. This might be my favourite lens of all, because looking through it, everything I see already feels like a memory – like a moment trapped in time, only to be put away for a while and then to suddenly emerge when least expected.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sharpness of a sudden memory, sparked – perhaps – by a scent or a song. It will be an image of some inconsequential thing, like a morning walk through the city with someone I once knew so well, and I will remember taking his photo while he stood on some steps, basking in the feeling that he was, for a little while, mine and mine alone.

We were so happy once with each other, and there was an ease in our companionship that I find difficult to come across in a city this cold (and I write this in January, when the cold is an unshakable haunt). Now I meet people and there always seems to be some pretension or another, and it makes me sad because I know that buried underneath all those layers of a different kind of image – more steel grey than sepia toned – there’s something genuine, and warm, aching for recognition and release.

That’s the pretty little thing in each of us, always reaching and reaching, stifled by a cautious glance not knowing what it’s looking for.