bopis

Woke up to a photograph of a mustachioed soldier of a nationality other than Filipino. He was drinking from his canteen, his eyes staring beyond his water, straight out to his front – which at the moment happened to be my left thumb. Rifle slung on his shoulder like a duffel bag of a forgotten wife’s imperishable laundry. He was in side view, so I failed to see what he was looking at. But my next moment cut me with a sense of inadequacy, but I attempted to restore myself by saying out loud to an anotherless morning that it was the picture that was incomplete, flat as it was, and spreading only to the size of an old man’s hand span. Picture ought to stretch to five yards or a mile, depending on what got my drinking soldier’s attention. Picture at a further distance from entirety, yes, if what he was looking at was an animal or an enemy because – unless that it or she was merely returning the soldier’s gaze – the responsible photograph ought to show what that it or she was looking at. For totality’s sake, if that it or she was looking at some other thing with eyes, then we needed rolls of photo paper. Ah me, I did not have a camera. No kilometric photo paper, so I better not blame myself, I said. Out loud. I could not see what my soldier saw. I could only see that he was looking. While drinking. Louder, I said that that was enough vision, given the limitations of white borders. Exactly ss the previous moment gave me a self-incompleteness to defeat, the next provided me a self-loathing to kick or persuade away. The picture, the picture! Hate the picture. The dimensions and nothing else. I said, loud. I looked at the unwilting photograph. I saw the soldier. He was looking out beyond his water. He was drinking from a canteen which seemed to me a grenade, which seemed to me a bloody good French kisser.

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