By Myself

I'm comfortable here. You might say that this is my café, the place I come to to feel at home when not at home. I know all the waiters although I am never sure they know me. I've been coming here for twenty years and some of the waiters were here back then. It's easier this way. I come here to write, to think, to warm my fingers in the winter so I can change film, to quench my thirst on the warmer days after a long walk. I am by myself but not alone. I sit, always at the same table, inside. I want to separate myself from Paris for a moment, to reflect on what I have seen and felt, away from the street for a moment or maybe an hour. This sense of being separate strikes me as I look in the mirror in front of me. It occurs to me that I am two people in Paris. There is the person in love with the city, smitten by her charms, back again year after year to experience as if for the first time the sense of life and art and intelligence. As this person I am in Paris absorbing her, building layer after layer of experience and laying it away to remember, someday. And then I bring my camera to my eye and suddenly I am no longer in the city. I am an examiner. Suddenly judging. Is this an image worth capturing? Is my Paris showing off her beauty or her talent? I bring my camera to my eye and look in the mirror again. Who am I now, at this moment? I trip the shutter, capture an image of two eyes. One that loves and one that judges. I believe I need them both.