To take. I knew but forgot or dismissed it. Image making (leave it to words to make such distinctions) is the more brutal art: if I were going to hurt you I'd use words, make you out as _______. Compare you to _______, make out your likeness. I wouldn't take your picture. A picture is a point of view, an opinion, a point taken, not a point made.
***
But I drove around looking for photos to take as the readying for leaving reminds me how much leaving I'm not doing. It would be better if I felt torn. I do not feel torn. There is work to do, and I feel bored.
***
I drove past the soy processing plant, I felt something else. Wonder. It is wonderful to look at; it towers and glints. It is not fenced. I parked in front and watched steam blow off the front building and walked around in front of it and looked for ways to frame its parts. Sometimes, warm and damp and the wind down, Galesburg smells like a box of salted pretzels. The stench where I stood, vegetable rot, chemical. I breathed through my mouth and heard a voice and framed a staircase, all at once. A cascade of steps looped round a rounded wall, I recompose it in my head, the photo lost.
***
Two men in white helmets coming at me fast. One sputters he's so angry, I must clear the camera of all images and he wants to see what photos I've taken: give it to me you let me see what you've taken this is private property. But there is nothing yet to show, only the latent image in the dark, a layer of film and light curled up inside, so he taps the LCD screen as if to see something in the camera settings and releases the back cover where the cartridge lies. You've exposed the film it's film not digital I say again because he thinks I am lying. Who are you what are you doing what did you take pictures of. I was just taking pictures. You were not just taking pictures. What were you going to do with your pictures? I'm sorry I really didn't know I couldn't be here I'm leaving. What do you mean you didn't know--? Eh? Eh? What are your pictures for?
***
Email from a colleague requesting that I take it down: a photo taken just before the reading began, a smile that says (perhaps) please don't take my picture. A photo I like a lot for its expression: I see you seeing me let's get this over with shall we? I understand what you're doing but take your gaze elsewhere. Not everything you see is for the taking.
***
I took it down. What are they for? Their for-ness isn't possessive, not as you might think. But fixated, that. I am slow and want to spin in one place for ages and replicate and replicate. The camera is a pause, the stay of the still life, again-ness. They are for again where again is most unlikely.
***
What is there to see I haven't seen someplace before? They are for before-ness, also. For what is already familiar in what is revealed. In what is already behind.
***
Another take, the one that means to look like: I take after you. My purple hoodie with the college's name splayed across the front, my sneakers. I give him my name, tell him I teach. He doesn't hear or thinks I'm lying. Students always getting chased off the property, one of you one day is going to get hit by a truck that what you want? Almost apologetic.
***
Or they are not for but because of. Because I was taken up with, got taken by, and the photo is evidence of subjection, that's all. It's a small thing--a pettiness--to need evidence. To need it so badly I walked away feeling something necessary had been taken from me.
***
