There is no worse stanger than the one we are to ourselves. Hell is other people? No, hell is not knowing who you are, and being pretty sure you don’t want to. This should therefore be my last post here, as I can no longer be Ian, and shall probably resume my life as the nameless kid I used to be.

The past will always tie me to this pool of sorrow. Pools of sorrow, waves of joy…

I love with all I have. Love gave a meaning to my life, to myself. I felt happy only because I loved and was loved in return. I felt pain only because my love couldn’t be expressed like it should have. I enjoyed so many things only because they work so well along with love.  And I have lost all that. My love is not longer wanted, no longer needed by the one I truly love. I am empty. I have no reasons for anything, no will. I am left with the imposed necessity of life, because I won’t take responsibility for ending it.

All in all, I had it all, lost it all, and never want to find it ever again. What is the point of loving like I do, to give like I give if it is not enough to keep the other’s love? It is indeed better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but better doesn’t mean it is good in any way.

I have heard all the consecrated words of sympathy. Time heal all wounds. A door closes, a window opens. You’ll be happy again. She might come back. I can disagree with them all. Time has never healed any of the wounds it’s layed on me. I am not one who seeks love, because if it needs to be found, then it is not the love I want. I was not happy before her, how could I be happy after her? How could she have been anything but the love of my life, for all the things I could give her? How could anything ever compare? And how could she come back, how could she find love for me again when we’re separated by a time zone, by our activites, by everything that is not our history? I wanted the best, I had it, I lost it, simply because she doesn’t want the best, just the mediocre crushes, the purely physical and the thrill of the chase. Chase me as I run for death.

Love, hope, will, all is dead, and it doesn’t prevent from life. That, truly, is what is most unfair.

All the beauty in the world means nothing if you can’t share it.

I’ve finally gotten a camera, and it actually got in the way of my motivation to to that 10 weeks 10 pictures thingy. I don’t think I would have been able to make something good with it. Here’s a selection of what I did, then, and I’d like to hear from you all: what would you make me work on to improve? I want constructive critisism. It’s a lot to ask, but I’m spoiled that way.

The present is something we never live in. The past is what we know, and therefore it’s what we feel. The future is what we expect, and therefore a projection of past pleasures, half-felt or fully regretted that we can only hope to live again, or fully. We certainly can hope for what we’ve never known, tempted by empathy or the perverse twist of marketing. Should we ever attain our projected goals and live again the past pleasures, we could not even take solace in them, unable to bask in their present glory and still trapped in the melancholy that is our lives.

Only pain brings us back to the immediate. Some pleasures can do it too, I’ll admit it, but their full power is only revealed once they are part of the past, while pain works the other way around.

Pain puts you right where you are, and corners you there. Stuck, and struck.

Work starts at 5.30am. There are probably earlier shifts for many others, but still, the roads are quite empty. Such an early start also means one would have to wake up even earlier and earlier again if one lives quite far from the work place. And then again, such an early rising suggest early bedding. They rarely get to see what popular culture has to offer: what’s popular being what’s seen by most people, and most people being able to enjoy these pleasures after 9.00pm, well, let’s just say some can’t really make this appointment.

They do not complain and when they are passionate about it, they make time. Conversations about football are quite often heard during the break, and therefore the world still turns for those who want to see it despite tiredness.

Being tired affects the ability to think and to concentrate. Luckily, none of that is needed to put products into a supermarket’s shelves. It’s a routine that doesn’t require much more thought than the basic counting and common sense you would even expect from a chimpanzee. Speed and a certain ability to endure some of the physical strains of a handling job are also expected, and one could think that tiredness would greatly influence those qualities. They do, partly, but this drawback is compensated but the lack of choice. Being slow means you’ll end your shift late, and since you’re not paid for extra-hours, who would want to do that? Being physically tired will also mean you’ll be late, or less efficient, and you’ll end up having even more to do if you don’t deal with it. 

Basically, one is expected to hate the job enough to do it well, no matter how tired one can get. “No one is doing this because they like it,” explains Anne, who’s being working there for the past 6 years. “Sometimes, you just have to do whatever you can to pay your bills.” Anne is one of the highest-ranked employees in this particular supermarket, but this seems to be a slight under-achievement for someone who has her academic background.  “I used to be a nurse, working in psychology departments. I worked there for over 20 years, but I have a bit of a temper, and I just couldn’t deal with the doctors anymore. It’s like they don’t care.” Do the bosses care more around here “No, but we don’t have to work with them, although I’ve been ejected from my first job here, in the [much less tiresome] Technology area for similar reasons.” Another member of the staff is a cook who lost his job and had to get back to work, no matter how. Most of them won’t really consider working in a supermarket as their own choice. It is something they have to do, and won’t take any pleasure in.

The permanent staff does get to go on holiday sometimes, taking back for a few weeks a “normal” rhythm and lifestyle. During the much calmer times of summer, they are replaced with temps such as Charlène, a 19 years-old student. “Sometimes there’s very little to do because no one comes to the store, and it makes it even worst” she says. “You feel like you had to get up very early for practically nothing, and you’re stuck here for 6 hours, tired, and you obviously can’t sleep.”

Some days are busier than others though. You’ll get a delivery every two days, making sure your allocated shelves don’t go empty. Depending on the shelves, such deliveries might double or triple your workload for the day, while the next might be as calm as it could be.

Clients are also a factor of their job. The store opens at 8.30am, and the first clients often wait for the doors to open like hyenas waiting for their turn on some great carrion. Once their in, they’re kings and an employee is just another word for a walking machine. “They expect you to know everything about every single shelf!” complains Charlène. “It’s like, ‘Where is the soap?’ no ‘Hello’, no ‘Please’, and how should I know, I’m working in the cheese department!” Anne also agrees: “Since they know you’re being paid for the job, they think they can do whatever they want, because it’s your job to make it right. They’ll take a can of beans in one shelf, and put it somewhere in the toilet paper shelf because they’ve just realised they don’t need beans, and can’t be bothered to put it back properly.”

When their shift is over, it’s nearly noon. They have the afternoon to themselves, 6 days a week. For those who work during these afternoons, the early-riser might seem like a bunch of lucky fellows and they are very well aware of that. “It’s great to have the whole afternoon to yourself” says Anne, “But do remember that not many people do. It basically means that all the people you know are out working when you’re just alone and tired.” 

Maybe even the bright side isn’t bright enough, when you wake up before the sun rises.

Yeah, so it’s not great, but I didn’t run away from taking that kind of picture, with this kind of angle, so it’s already that. And no silly curcular black gradiant this time, yay!

*

Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m despressed, lonely or rational. I feel like nothing can ever be right, and no matter how my mind works to sort this problem out, it doesn’t change my feeling of it. I feel like I can’t go on, but must. It makes the moments of hapinness that much better, sure. Let’s just have that glass half full.

I had never really done Black and White before, because I thought it was too easy to make something look good that way. I still think it is too easy, but it doesn’t make it less pretty.

By the way, I want to thank my 2 daily readers (actually, 2 is a good day) for their support. I’ll try to write a bit more if that helps. It’s nice to know that, despite the extreme irregularity of updating, there are still a few people who come here.

But I like to pretend you have to know why, on my end, I don’t feel like we should or even can be. You’re a foolish hope of mine. One of very few, actually, but still, you are part of the hopes I have but know will never bear fruit, or don’t even want to consider. You actually fill both these categories.

In the event of my life changing its meaning suddenly, I knew I would need something to help me consider a new light, somewhere. Since I define my life by my relationships, it seems normal that I am intuitively attentive to what my heart feels at the possibilities each encounter represents. In the wake of your passage, I could see that what I liked about you could be things I’d grow up to love. You could give me hope. I don’t think you’ve ever known that, and I will never need you to. Hopes do not need awareness when there is no need to fulfil them.  

I like you and I could potentially love you. There’s no way I can know that, and yet, I think I do. But you’re not just what I like, the sweet, funny, easy-going and always caring woman I’ve first met. You’re also the dark, mean, selfish and abusive woman I’ve worked with and observed when life wasn’t allowing you to continue on the path you had set for yourself. I won’t pretend I didn’t care, and I won’t run away from the fact that I did flee when I saw everything I tried to help you was being sent back to my face, insults where I only meant friendship.

I also know you’re not as funny as I have made yourself up to be. I know you try, hard, but fail. Harder. I know you’re endorsing a culture I have nothing but contempt for. I know you expect a lot and give very little. You’re bright but tricky. You’re nice but cruel. You’re beautiful but scary.

And that is how one makes a fool out of one’s hopes. It could never be for the obviousness of what I am, and it should never be for the barriers of what you are.

Still, hope is foolish, even when it’s not a foolish hope. And I owe you that. Or I would have. Your choice.

*

Not a challenge, I just wanted to try a portrait using a timer, and not trying to arrange the place where I’d stand on the picture. But what interested me in the resulting picture whith its three stages: a blurry and dark foreground, a earthy and sunburnt pathway in the middle, and a very detailed background. I found it interesting, so it’s 2 out of 10.