Pavement

Wet Pavement

It speaks of color, of edges. Of textures and feelings. Of Rothko. Of the unspeakable beauty of everything and of nothing. Of cold, wet cement and lights cast on it. She stopped in front of a car to take it. He honked furiously and yelled at her out the window. His name was Roger and his wife had left him. He had to get home and walk the only thing that now loved him, a dopey golden retriever. She took dozens, unable to capture any of it. The way the soft edges of light blurred into one another. How each droplet created a life in itself, as the vessel for the reflection of light. How its brokeness reminded me of an Italian fresco. How he could never see it, because it was not how he sees. Why I left him.

When I took my own photograph, and attempted to write about it in a Matalon-ian way, I was reminded of a phrase in the text — “Without a second thought she lied about everything,giving reality infinite leeway, the possibility of ceaseless metamorphosis” (Matalon 142) This moment is one of the numerous moments in which Matalon appears to reflexively comment, through her novels characters, on the novel itself. The passage speaks to me about the lies or fictions spoken about the photographs in the text, and the power they can have for the reader/ viewer both in how they read the text and also how they view other photographs, including their own. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that imaginary narratives are just as significant, if not a more significant, means of interpreting our reality and our photographs.