Layouts. They are a testimony of what you have, and more importantly, what you don’t have. But even discussing “having” something places you in a specific, conflicted, tortured set of those who hunt with the camera. And I don’t mean those consumed by the immediate, the popular, or those confined to the con of the day. I’m talking about the inflicted. The possessed are those who sit up unable to sleep because of the frames crossing their mind. The missed opportunities. Those who stand fast, those who hold until the last moment. The pop of the parachute seconds before impact and never a second before. Because what’s the point? How else would you do it?
You sit and you wait and you doubt and you daydream about a version of yourself that may or may not exist. Moving through the field with understanding, nuance, and purpose. There to acquire. There is nothing else. Shapeshifting into whatever friend or foe you need to be. Smiles through clenched teeth, small talk, and submissive body language.
You know who you are. Counting your kill before returning to base.
Selfish, self-centered, greedy. Probably. Silly, trivial. Maybe. But occasionally it becomes more, way more, and then it all seems like it’s worth the violation, the travesty. The shame of it all. What’s there is there and you are only slowing it down, dissecting. Don’t act like you made something. You didn’t. You put yourself in the kitchen but the ingredients were already there. Just waiting for you to turn the oven on.
You think maybe at some point it will end but secretly you know it won’t. It can’t. You would be lost without the drama. The layer cake of life’s artificial sweetener doesn’t work because you tasted the honey. Drawn from the legions of tiny wings faced with imminent death. Their commitment makes you stare at the reflection burning right through what’s left of your honesty. The cracks of your foundation widen with rays of pure white, the blissful light of those who surrender.