Poor Pictures of the Earth
The day I became older than my mum, I showed her things she had never seen. Because she’s dead, she never will. Poor pictures of ordinary things. Imperfect, scattered, copied too many times in my mind, losing clarity but gaining weight. A heaviness that makes them difficult to lift. She never saw these things, but I did. Maybe that counts for something.
HK, TW
Circa 2018—2025
Compiled in 2025
Photography (Opaque / Monochrome)
Contact for use.
#1#2#3This is how I talk to her now, through images, through dreams. My dreams aren’t linear. And in the end, the mother in my dreams is just a figure, something my mind has conjured. In these dreams she’s almost always distant, removed, returning home as if she had survived leukaemia, achieving something she never managed in the waking world. I’m always younger in these dreams. Not a specific age. Not that forever-trapped 10-year-old. Just younger. I know the truth, though: she’s no longer alive. And yet, I believe she’s come back. Days, weeks, and months pass by in this dream world. She often ignores me, lost in her own reality, detached, distant, unspeaking. I, too, go about life such as it is. In these dreams, I sometimes forget she’s there. #4The last time I saw her conscious was in the hospital. She had not yet been moved to intensive care. She was upset with me then. I think I’d been impatient to end the visit. A few days later, she was moved to the intensive care unit, a dark room, a lot more serious than a regular hospital room, window curtained over, the illumination of various machines bleeding through the blanketed dimness. The sound was dampened. A nurse asked me which football team I liked. I distractedly replied, ‘Essendon’ and passed some invisible threshold into becoming more adult-like, attempting to paper over what I’d rather not acknowledge.
#5#6What would my mum say if she were still here? I never had an adult conversation with her, so I’ll never know. What would she make of me, the person I’ve become?
#7#8Often, when I sense her spirit, it’s because there’s a lightness in the air, a moment of levity. That’s the space I think she inhabits now. Smiling at something amusing. Laughing at a joke. Making a sarcastic comment. #9I walk through life in my boots and a sweat-stuck t-shirt, fevered and distracted. ‘Distracted’ is a core personality trait of mine. I tried meditation, and that helped. So, too, does medication, therapy, and exercise. At least now, I can sleep without medication. That’s something.
I used to take my depressive episodes, roll them into a ball, and swallow them whole. I did that for years. There was a comfort in it. Until I got to a point where I couldn’t anymore.
To live is to adapt. We can’t live in fear of change or live for what was. That’s a kind of death, too. But living in the moment is more complicated than it sounds. You have to keep pulling yourself into the now, away from the then or if. And then is a safe place. If too, because it’s hypothetical, a sandbox to sink into. For much of my life, I’ve hidden behind tired eyes and a sleepy brain. As I got older, I added a beard as an accoutrement, another thing to hide behind. When I look back at things, I can say without regret that I’ve spent most of my life self-anaesthetised, doing things I didn’t want to do.And yet, if someone waved a magic wand, I probably wouldn’t change too much. It’s all I’ve known, after all.
It’s all I am.#10#11
If I were to share anything with my mum, I would share a moment of lightness, perhaps not anything important, but something she might appreciate on some level, something that wouldn’t weigh her down:
The exhilaration I felt as a teenager, finishing a shift at the restaurant, having asked a girl I liked out. The lightness I felt, the natural high, me asking her this question playing on repeat in my mind, walking to the tram stop, my feet with extra bounce, listening to Reflection Eternal on my metallic blue minidisc player, also set to repeat. I’d have had a greasy red apron slung over my shoulder, have been wearing a black collared t-shirt black jeans, smelled of grease, sweat, and pizza, had more than a few pimples, and undoubtedly, sported a bad haircut. The world from the upside of the see-saw.
A rare moment where I felt like I was moving toward something rather than away. Where I wasn’t just watching life happen but stepping into it. A poor picture, maybe. Imperfect and worn. But mine.
#12#13