Abe Comments

The weather is grey. The light is rather cold, wan and weak. It has been raining all day. Some single souls walking in the streets with umbrellas. Car lights reflected in puddles. I am not sad, just a bit slower and more melancholic than normally. I’m trying to inhale this moisture. Rain always cleans up the atmosphere. I’m walking and watching wet world. When I get home, I’ll be observing rain drops on window glass. Maybe I will take some shots of water dropping on my balcony or I will lie in bed and read a book in the warmness and softness of my duvet . I wish I had a fireplace I like such lazy and melancholic days as this one. I can stay at home and have no remorse for the world outside. Well, but not too long!

Last warm days and last chance to feast eyes on the impressive beauty of autumn painting her magnificent views with fallen leaves, trees and sun. Battle between summer and winter is going to take just a couple of days more and finally winter depression will attack. Short days. Dark afternoons and “special” clothes which make you move like a big, fat creature, who is always looking only for a place to sleep. I usually do not wake up with the sun, as some say. I guess on Sundays I will have a great opportunity to wake up at a sunset or not to see a single sunbeam at all. Each year I try to find a sollution, a way of defeating this horrible sickness brought by winter. This year I’ll do enything to take a few days off and go somewhere with friends. I haven’t had winter holiday for years!

Fog came to the city yesterday night. It was so dense that I could not see a lamppost standing 20 metres before me. I thought the conditions might be interesting for taking some shots. I took a camera and went to nearest construction site. Some people were still working there casting long shadows. Everything looks so unreal in fog. Even normal things, shapes we see everyday look different, fantastic or mysterious. Before I managed to install the tripod workers disappeared and I had to focus on the landscape with no people. Fortunately there was this digger that looked like a big frozen dragon or a hand of some kind of a giant getting out of his cave. I took a few shots in the artificial, yellow lighting of street lampposts. Fog is magical!!

I have just moved into a different district and now I spend most of my free time in traffic jams. That gives me an opportunity to think. It’s not that I don’t think in other situations. I can spend many lazy hours thinking about anything I’d like without having to leave the car. I feel safe, almost like home but with no presence of other house creatures - brothers, mothers, dogs etc. I guess that many drivers have not noticed this great opportunity which was given to them as a sophisticated gift of modern civilisation. Most of them spend time in traffic jams deeply exploring their nostrils, swearing at other drivers and talking on the phone. Why take the underground, train or tram while we can broaden our horizons stuck in long lines of comfortable, modern machines?! People do not leave your cars at home. Let’s spend our lifes in cars!

I saw her in the lobby of the hotel. Just standing and looking around as if she was waiting for someone, who had already been late. She was wearing a black skirt and white shirt, a typical company uniform. Straith dark hair, not too long, neatly combed. “Why are you staring at her like this?! There’s nothing special about that girl”, I thought. But there was something for sure! After a while I realised that I might look odd standing like that and watching. “A damn pervert”, one could have thought, but I couldn’t stop. I hid behind one of the lobby columns and kept beholding, which in fact was even more strange and suspicious. Finally a man came to her and they left. I experienced again the feeling of missing something I had never had, something important. Well maybe next time I’ll find the strenght to do something about it.

I hate smokers. Unfortunately many of my friends smoke and I cannot really do anything about it. Why do I hate them? I have in fact one reason, their egoism. Have you noticed that they do not care about nonsmokers? They always want or rather demand a place where they could smoke but at the same time they do not care if the smoke impacts life of other people. It is even more anoying when they find smoking in a public place normal. I’m not going to explain the details of smoke influence on health. That’s not what I’m about. I just hate the smell of cigarettes which follows me home from work. I’m fed up with the stinking lift in my block. I’ve got enough of people who smoke at my window and say that I overreact because I tell them not to do it . Moreover smokers tend not to believe that the smoke may be unpleasant. It is not that they do not care. They are simply unable to understand that one may not love and share their “passion”.

Sometimes when I am alone I sit in my room and wait for my secret friends. When I turn the light off they know I need them. They know that I ivite them. I just close my eyes and listen to the silence. After a while I hear some noises. Somebody shuffles behind the door. Something scratches a window glass. At the moment I know for sure they answered my call and that they are already with me. Small green dragon is always the first one to show up. He sits on the arm of my chair, lights up a big brown cigar and says: “How’re the things going, buddy?”. “Well, quite all right. Still smoking that shit, pal?” - I say. “Want some?” - the dragon smiles to me. “Yes, gladly” - I take the cigar and inhale. We just sit, smoke and wait for others. Then we usually have a party…

I cannot understand why PC edition of FotoStation Pro is so different from the one prepared for Mac OS. When I worked with Mac FotoStation I found it the best photography soft I’d ever seen, of course only as an addition to Adobe’s Photoshop. In fact there is no better and faster way of viewing, selecting and describing pics, especially when it comes to hundreds of photos. I cannot say I completely and thoroughly tested the PC version. Nevertheless I noticed at once that I was having problems with deleting images. Well, that was, in fact, the only thing I installed Fotostation Pro for, to easily view and quicly remove unwanted photos that is. Moreover PC Fotostation interface looks very hard but that may be the matter of getting used to it.

I am afraid. I had a very bad night with awful nightmares and this unknown fear is still with me. It is as if a vampire or ghoul or a different dark creature sat on my shoulder and did not want to leave. I cannot describe or determine it but it is somehow associated with the fears I know. My thoughts go around usual problems of my generation during such days. How am I going to live my life? How to make money? Am I, in general, worth anything? Am I able to create anything? Is my mother proud of me? Well, I know she is not, but will she be one day?! This fear is also something else, something more. It might be the fear of death. I often think of my father’s death. I have so many things in common with him so why shall I live longer?! Why not die now, when I still have no kids and debts. Oh I do not mean a suicide! And I do not want to die for sure, but subconsciously I feel it might happen. Well, I do not know - an accident, heart attack like my father, etc. Well I’ll better get some cake, donuts or something. It always makes me feel better.

I would die if I had no books. I always try to have a book with me so I could read something in the meantime, you know on the bus or when I wait for somebody. I have just finished the “Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. It is not an easy piece of literature but indeed very interesting, colourful and creepy. The main idea is quite simple and common but at the same time it is just something that always makes me wonder. Do our deeds impact our outlook? Or maybe how much our deeds impact the look? The book certainly touches many different aspects of human existence. I am sure every reader will find something else in it, but for me that was the main idea. Beside psychological problems Wilde also described his view on English 19th century high society. It is a great piece of literature, worth a moment of reflection.