They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle."
More than thirty years ago Paul Auster adapted his short story "Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story" to form the screenplay for Wayne Wang’s film "Smoke". Both versions feature a key sub-plot which reveals one man’s beguiling obsession with the city in which he lives. Auster’s protagonist Auggie Wren, played by Harvey Keitel in the film, lives in Brooklyn and runs a tobacconist shop on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue. Every day he takes his camera out into the street at 8.00 am and takes a picture of the same street corner, his corner, day after day.
Life has this veneer of permanence with each day, each year, coming and going with tedious repetition, and yet look a little closer and there's a constant change and we are all part of it. We are all in the process of dying, with each of us marching towards our inevitable demise.
I am grateful for those constant changes, so when I see another boat moored across the river, I "do an Auggie Wren", rush inside to get my camera, and take a photo. I feel grateful that, of all the bends in the river, they have chosen my bend in the river to spend a whole day, sometimes a whole night, and sometimes even several days and nights.
I feel so grateful that I want to shout out to them, "Howdy neighbour!"
