Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

17 March 2006 | Tiger

A little girl walking behind me on East Parkway, past the library, is speaking, I believe, to her father (I never turn back to look): “Tiger, they walk very slow, then they run, getcha!”

14 March 2006 | Potatoes

I have to do something different, but I don’t know what. It may be everything or it may be something small that changes everything. I remember standing in the room where the coats were, debating what to do. Change is pressed upon one. That was her translation from the French. The question was about change, about whether change is possible, and she quoted this from the French. When she arrived, she smiled and waved to me. Had she come over and talked, I would have welcomed it, but since she didn’t, I stayed where I was. It wasn’t a game. I was sitting on the couch, and there was room to my left, although in fairness to her, there were also some pillows there, which she would have had to move aside. Later, as people took their seats at the table, I saw an open seat beside her and almost sat down but instead went to the kitchen to get my potatoes. By the time I finished transferring the potatoes to a serving dish and placing the dish on a side table, the seat was taken. Each thing has its momentum. In the room with the coats I decided she wasn’t who I wanted, and vice versa, and that I would leave. I may have been wrong, but one must decide based on what one knows. You cannot divide yourself into two people and live two lives to see which is better. There is another world, she said, again quoting the French, evidently she spoke French, but it is in this one.

07 March 2006 | Blow Up

Sometimes I try to remember her, to see her before me, but it’s difficult. Everything is fuzzy. At best what I remember, or what I remember best, are photographs.

Recently, while walking through Prospect Park, I passed a patch of grass where we once sat after riding a pedal boat. I have some photos of her from that day, taken on a blanket. I think of these as the “betrayer photos,” because, as I learned later, she was betraying me then. Possibly this designation fits every photo I ever took of her, but these are the only ones I’m certain about. Whenever I look at them, I can’t help but turn them around in my mind and see myself through her eyes. She thinks: He doesn’t know.

And it’s true: he doesn’t.

It’s a bit like Blow Up. A man photographs a couple in a deserted park, and then discovers, in the background of some of the photos, possible evidence of a murder.

Although I didn’t photograph a murder that day, I was no less oblivious.

And who knows, perhaps I’m oblivious still; perhaps these are not “betrayer photos” at all, but something else, something that will only become clear as she recedes even further into the distance.