The tiny Olympus PEN camera is tucked in my pocket. It shoots half-frames, 72 images to one roll of film. It is a simple tool, no focus, no settings except for the speed of the film spooled inside, its sensitivity. It needs no batteries, a perfect instrument to play as the snow melts and then comes back in hard drifts in the middle of the night.
I walk towards that same park by the river, the only place my feet will take me.
A great flatbed truck hesitates in the middle of the busy road, red lights blinking in the dim, wet afternoon. I wonder if it has broken down, but then I see a guard pull a gate aside and the truck eases into the park. I decide this is a fascinating moment, the empty truck, the wet road, the glowing red lights, the bare trees in the distance. What it means I do not know, but there is a grace to it, some movement in the stagnation of late winter. I stand in the middle of the road, clicking the shutter, advancing and clicking again.
The truck grinds to a stop.
The driver leans from the door, staring back at me. I know what he is asking, even though I can barely hear him. I shake my head, hold up the camera, easily 40 years old if not more. I say I am an artist, shooting landscapes, that this is a film camera. It is a pointless collection of words. It never puts people at ease. They never see artists with cameras, just spies, or undercover police, or investigators looking to document something wrong. I am caught again, in the most innocent of acts and am just as stupid as the last time. The only reason I can take these pictures is when no one notices.
Somehow he understands I was shooting the river and the city not his truck, which is not at all what I was doing and he dismisses me with an angry flourish of his eyebrows. The truck lurches back into gear with a cloud of diesel and I walk past that ozone smell with all of the calm I can muster, not walking like an investigator but some tourist, as I count my steps and try to see out of the back of my head if they are still watching me. I go down towards the river, making a point to look like I am taking pictures of the water and a boat passing. The truck brakes shriek before it wheezes off.
Of course, the real reason he stopped is because this is government land, or city land and what he was doing there, what he was going to take away on that big empty truck is anyone's guess. What he was doing, I will never know. This constant paranoia here, of being caught doing something wrong - it is in the very water we drink. And then it rubs off on me as I stare up at the surveillance cameras on every streetlight. Someone in a room saw me here, and what I did, and I am just as guilty as the next person. We are all trespassing.
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