2024.02

This photo was found on an old external hard drive. Judging by the filename ‘2004_Canada_Business_Trip’, it was taken by him.

The space within the frame, the objects, and the height of the viewpoint from which they were captured made me reflect on my bond with him. Recalling how little I knew about most of his life as a family member, I felt a strange fluttering and wanted to store this photo in an even deeper place.

Blending someone else's scene with my own is intriguing. It begins with the simple desire to invent a story, illogically weaving together ‘me’ and ‘you’, ‘here’ and ‘there’. As the crossovers repeat, the past of actual events vanishes, leaving only the future. That future is like an individual's prayer, prophesying the past from a ‘later’ viewpoint. My feelings about this bedroom were similar. A desire to prophesy what he might have recalled before this scene.

Once I removed the coarse grain embedded in the digital photo, I became familiar with this beautiful bedroom. The green carpet, beige-toned wallpaper, curtains, crumpled floral quilt, equally crumpled pillow, switched-off lamp, telephone, magazines, painting. Painting, the house within the painting, the person who painted it, that person's room, back to the room within the house in the painting. By the time I imagined the ringing phone within that room, I could deceive myself into believing this incident was mine. From then on, the timeline reversed, and many things began to be erased.

The creaking bed in this room, born of oblivion, was erased. The blanket and pillow, permeated with a musty smell, were erased. The ringing phone, the dust that flew when the curtains were shaken, the broken light, the dull carpet—all were erased. The cheap knickknacks bought at the market, the original artwork behind the print, the painter who created it, the house he gazed upon, and whoever lived in that room—all were erased.

Instead,

The scent of his swollen legs and feet, which he exposed after removing his socks upon entering this room, materializes. His soft fingerprints materialize. The names of two or three perfumes left behind by the person who had been wrapped around his neck emerge, along with his eyes, unable to brush his teeth before falling asleep, and the lost documents. The woman there and the woman here emerge, along with his brother's advice, the queasy dream he had on the plane, and the missed call. And a letter addressed to the office worker emerges. They emerge.

Therefore, this bedroom has come to state more than the truth. He, who had been capturing the incident directly and shaking it, entered that incident and became trapped within it. He became evidence of the unstated incident. The declarer is proving an incident that did not occur. Everything that person says is true. Because that incident will all occur from now on.

He is now a retired company man. But I send this letter to the very young company man who pressed the shutter with soft fingertips back then, who left the room wearing a suit filled with the scent of cologne. Your gaze remains stored here. Only now, it has become my own. That feels both sorry and grateful, and a little jealous. So I've decided to fold your story neatly like the chorus of a pop song and defer it to an endless future.