My Obsession With Leica

The absurdity is believing in something other than a cyclical life. You hang around long enough and you start seeing them fall in line and begin to merge into the pre-cut grooves. And off to the slaughterhouse with. Them.
You.
When I was a boy, my grandfather took photographs with a twin-lens reflex camera. I could read by then so I asked him what Leica meant. That was what was written on the apparatus. Leica. And he told me about her.
–It’s actually a Rolleiflex. I scratched in the word Leica myself. With a piece of metal wire.
But it was too late. I was obsessed with Leica. Every night I fell asleep I prayed for Leica. Which was stupid, because Leica had been dead for years. I also prayed that I don’t get swallowed up in the giant maelstrom Captain Nemo and the Nautilus got sucked in.
Sometimes you need to have another perspective. I hated the Soviets. But for different reasons. I hated them for putting that dog up there and letting her starve. Or run out of air.
Asphyxiate.
And all the other monkeys that went up after Leica. Or whatever other kinds of animals they sent. All in the name of Human Progress.
All in the name of Human Progress.
Sometimes you need to have another perspective. When you think of Leica, you think your life is not so bad.

Caribou

Have you ever shaken hands with someone missing two fingers, No, It feels like a giant, fleshy chicken claw, That’s weird, When she took my hand she squeezed so hard all I could think of was head cheese, Perhaps she was overcompensating, Perhaps but anyway I like a firm handshake over a limp clammy grip, It is said it shows resolution and determination, but I think it’s overcompensation, It could be, Women are reincarnated into one another: the respectable ones are reborn as whores and the whores are reborn as respectable ones, And who is reborn as the little girls,
Men.

Zone of Alienation

—You can tell the Americans by how fats they are. And the baseball hats.
He laughed through his teeth and spat.
—How can you live in this cold and grey?
—Russian people is very tough.
—Do you get a lot of Americans travelling here?
—Yes. Strange.
—Why?
—I don’t know. Maybe…they want to have six fingers?
He laughed again. And spat again. His phlegm came down in a green, coagulated mass and landed on a rock. The substance trickled down slowly like a mass of larvae.
—You can take now pictures if you have something…
—It’s all right.
—You don’t want?
—No. I usually remember where I’ve been.
He shook his head and lit a cigarette against the cold gust, protecting the flame within his cracked palm.
—Look at this. I have sausage fingers.
He coughed.
—Are you ready?
—Yes.
—Okay. You want drink?
—Sure.
—Okaaay.
—Okay.
He pulled in more phlegm through his throat and expectorated it onto the frozen gravel. Bits of his saliva sprayed me and I felt ill. I could smell the insides of his stomach on my cheek.
—MmmDa. This is the consequences of our errors. There is nothing left for us to do except wait a few centuries before to farm again. This bloody reactor will be here twenty-five thousand years from now.
—If we’re even around to see it.
—MmmDa. Let’s go drink.
—Okay.