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Silver PowerShot


Labour weekend. Spring clean in progress. An occasion pregnant with emotional parcels of various sizes and familiarity.

I found my old digital camera in a decaying bag; my first: A silver PowerShot Canon I received as a birthday present from my ex. Half the size of my current iPhone.

I loaded new batteries and flicked through the photos bracing myself for projectile emotional trauma: A few shots from December 2016 when I was selling all my cheap second hand furniture to move up north; a lamp & bedside table, a single bed & its broken mattress, and my beloved clunky black mountain bike. The one I rode everywhere because I didn't have a car or a license. The one I pedaled through southerly headwind, cursing my life. The oldest photos were from back home 9 or 10 years ago, just some test shots from a damaged shutter and the very last, a blurry badly lit portrait of dad in the living room.

There were more memories, more life, more of a person in that tiny forgotten camera than the new Z50 Nikon buried under bags and clothes in the closet upstairs. My iPhone is filled with site visit photos and the occasional glum selfie to exchange in the Most Degraded Lockdown Look competitions.

These days, I post a photo on Instagram & then I'm so haunted by the whys and so-whats and what-ifs of my own brain that I delete the app & hide for 3 months. I'm scared to live, to have a presence, to be a person. I am haunted by what I think.

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