Tag: serialized fictional

  • Photobia

    It was the invention of the digital photograph that may be credited with the reprieve from destruction granted to humanity… or at least for saving us temporarily. 

    I know, dear reader, that this may be a bold and potentially far too dramatic statement to place on the mantle of our budding new relationship, here, now, just like that, but there it is. Fact. A fact I know to be a virtual certainty, a clear and unobstructed truth, viable from a million perspectives, crystalline and as clear and in-focus as any photo I’ve clicked, snapped, plucked from the photons of light scattering through the air. Any. Ever. 

    But then I don’t take pictures any more, do I? Too risky. Too selfish. I ceased that hobby when I learned more of it. After all, it was all there, as plain as the language and words scribbled on these pages, the twists of very phase that we were there using to excuse our actions. I saw it. I saw the truth of it unfold, and it was confirmed for me in a proof so perfect that I could not doubt it, question it, ignore it. And perhaps you too will stop your own frenzy of photographic apocalyptic chaos after what I am able to…

    Ah, but wait; Surely I am getting ahead of myself. 

    It is my failing. This tenacity in me to grasp onto a moment and present it a single, perfectly focused image is still so strong, it remains so firmly entrenched in my heart, soul, my being, or whatever you prefer to call it, that to extend that moment temporally, to weave a path through the here, now and before, to pull it out like a spool of film stretched backwards in time as to explain a sequence, and then to play out the implications after the moment has passed and well into the future thereafter, ah, but it is not a skill that I have honed by my years of clicking shutters and catching instants of light in my lenses. I was a photographer and the haste derived from that skill is core, essence to my being. I regret that now, of course, but that this tale, this rant, this warning should suffer any, unfold poorly, or fall to convince because of that lapse, ah, but that burden is not yours, it is mine.

    See, you already know me I think. We’ve met. We’ve bumped shoulders on the street. 

    Ah. Recall? there was that time in Paris when I was steadying myself against a lamppost, my back turned to the Champs-Élysées while my lens was aimed at some richly flowing frieze upon the Arc de Triomphe. You walked through my frame and I snapped at the exact, precise, inconvenient moment when you stepped between the epic stone monument and my camera, your head turning and your eyes catching in a softly focused blur of confusion that forced me to retake the picture. 

    We were also together, briefly but together, that day in New York City, my fish-eye lens a bubble of elegantly tuned glass exploding the blur of lights, neon, and yellow taxi drag-lines into the perfect snapshot of West forty-second street in the last second of sinking daylight in a photograph that I would have been proud to hang on my wall, but no, no, no, thank you, no, because there was your head smudging, blurring, blocking the lights of the McDonald’s sign against the New Amsterdam marquee from my frame. 

    You don’t remember? 

    Then perhaps I can jog your memory of that day when we knocked elbows, paid our excuse-mes, as we both leaned over a rustic wooden rail bending into a kind of pale misty haze falling out of a mountain scene, zooming in to photograph that waterfall near Jasper. Or the day of the parade when your kid’s balloon persistently strayed into my shot. Or maybe it was you that handed me an awkward glare when I was merely taking photos of my own family in the park and lingering, yes, lingering a little too long on the swings striving for the idealized action shot I had blinking through my mind’s eye. 

    It was somewhere, may have been everywhere, or it certainly was anywhere, but believe me, we’ve met. 

    Ah, but please don’t misunderstand. This is not to imply or inflict some abstract, unfocused blame upon you, dear reader. Blame? Ha! No. Not blame. Blame for what? Blame for something, nothing, everything. Blame for the anguish of ruined photos, ah, no. No. Not blame. 

    No. Oh no. No. No. 

    No. 

    That would never do, indeed no. Blame, not at all. Not for you or me or any one of us alone. No. Rather. Well, rather it’s merely, simply, wholly that we are acquainted, you and I, somehow, if you know it, believe it, share that knowledge or not, and within the frame of this notion I share my picture of the impending apocalyptic ruin, end and doom of humanity. Just that.

    Just that.

    Just that. And who ever would have thought our eventual demise would be filtered through a lens so seemingly benign, so innocent, so… so… ah, but there I go again.

    It starts like this: it starts with the simple understanding that when I was a boy I was also a scout. That was me; Picture it. A neat-and-tidy uniformed, nature-strolling, camp-fire-building scout standing with his trusty red-plastic army knife tucked into a faux-leather utility belt and an orange scarf neatly woggled around his young neck. We camped. We crafted. We sang songs. We pledged allegiance to mysterious English lords long since dead this past century, and saluted proudly to the flags of our country and our club. I tell you this now, dear reader, because it is important that you understand one of those oft-recited mottoes, a rhyme, a creed, an elegant maxim of old-fashioned wisdom that peppered my actions then and thereafter, for a long piece of my adult life, and even now haunts this very treatise. We had a motto that would be repeated, sage wisdom flung to anxious children as they clambered out of a crowded sport utility van dislodging themselves from civilization and stepping into the wilderness. Our voices would sing it out to fellow scouts if we caught them dropping a wrapper from a snack, or snapping a still-green branch from a tree. “Leave only footprints,” we’d chime with the sing-song air of a memorized credo, “take only photos.”

    Take only photos. Take only…

    Photos? PHOTOS? Just photos. Just that.


    August 1998

    I was packing. “How many rolls of film do you think I should take? Five? Six?”

    “You can always buy more.” She says.

    “Twenty-four photos per roll at six rolls, that’s, uh… about a hundred and fifty pictures. Is that a lot of pictures? It doesn’t seem like a lot a pictures to me.”

    “Depends.”

    “It is my first time over to Europe. How many would you take. I don’t know, but it seems like there could be quite a bit I’d like to photograph. I don’t think I’d use a whole roll every day, but it’s three weeks. Three weeks. Twenty one days. Or is it twenty-two? No, right, twenty one. And only one hundred and fifty photos. It… it seems like I might take more than five or six photos per day, you know?”

    “You can buy more film. They sell film in Europe.”

    “But do I want to always be looking for places to buy film?” 

    My nerves are not my friends when I travel. They get the better of me. Always have, always will, I suspect. I am not a fearful traveler, but I stumble through the unknown with both hands outstretched and my feet plodding, scuffing, stumbling along with methodical care and attention. Travelling didn’t come naturally, either. Some people see the world and grab onto it with both hands. I wanted to reach out. I wanted to grab it. I wanted to soak it in, flit from place to place, country to country, new world to new world, absorbing the people and the culture, dropping into another culture, another city, blending with perfect fusion of ease and certainty. I wanted to be the guy who stepped off an airplane with perfect confidence and waved for a taxicab to scoot him off to an important place or vital meeting, I wanted to be seamless and noticed all at the same time, blurred into a geography not my own. But I was not that guy. Instead, I fumbled with maps, and studied unfamiliar street signs, I was the guy who looked up into the sky as if it would help me orient my latitude with the grace of a mythological ranger, as if seeing the glare of the sun would shine an all-knowing beacon upon my destination. I was not that guy. Oh, no. Not he. No. No. No.

    “They sell film everywhere. I’m pretty sure.” She insists. “You can very likely buy it from shops on every street corner or even from little old ladies selling their baking from baskets. Anywhere. Everywhere.” A pause. “You are going to a place that thrives off of tourism, so you think they are going to miss the chance to sell you something as fundamentally important as film?”

    “They have that?”

    “What? Film?”

    “No. I mean do they have little old ladies selling muffins out of baskets?”

    “I have no idea.” She sighs. “I’ve never been.” She says, she begrudging me jealous, but she is going back to school and I’ve graduated. “I’m just talking, you know? But they will have film. Everyone has film.”

    “So, how many rolls of film do you think I should take?”

    “Take five.” 

    “Five? And buy more?”

    “Yeah.” She says. “Just buy more. It’s just film.”

  • Embarrassing & Stupid

    (serialized fiction)

    The video faded to credits and I pulled the lid of the computer closed with that familiar magnetic click. My arm hurt. I let the aluminum rectangle slide to my left side where it caught between a fold in the blanket and my hip. I leaned back into the pillow and I’m sure an involuntary groan escaped through my lips.

    “That looked interesting.” A nurse stepped into the room leading a wheeled cart of vials and medical implements in front of her. Her nametag read Gail. I could only see her now-familiar eyes which scream pity and the pink medical mask covering her mouth and nose buckled ever so slightly in sync with her lips as she spoke. “Was it you?”

    “In the video?”

    “Yeah?”

    “Nah. It’s just some guy —” I shrugged weakly. The medication had dialed the sharp pain back to merely a dull ache. That ache was the various muscles in my back and neck waving a white flag. “— a channel I’ve been watching lately.”

    “I need to take some more blood, okay?” Gail moved my laptop to the bedside table, careful to untangle the power cord from the safety rail. She prodded the space on the hospital bed beside me smoothing the blankets into a makeshift workspace for her collection of vials and labels she would need in a moment. Then, she took my arm with her hand and lightly touched around the intravenous tube with practiced fingers. She asked. “So — you’re an athlete right?”

    “I guess. I run.” I replied but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think of my accident then correct myself. “I mean — I used to run.”

    “I run, too.” The fabric of her mask implied she smiled, and with a nod she added. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you back out there.”

    Neither of us said anything as she peeled printed sticker labels from a tear-off sheet and applied them to a small collection of glass tubes, the soft clicking noises filling the silence in the air.

    “I do envy some of the people in those videos though.” She said finally as I watched her start to fill the vials one at a time with dark, red liquid draining from the tube in my arm. “You know — they’re out there doing it — right? Really living.”

    “I tried that — “ I shrugged even while realizing I was only stoking the fires of her pity for me. Not a good look. “See where really living got me?”

    Her eyes finally met mine. “You going to let a little tree branch swatting you in the arm stop you, then?” And when I looked away sheepishly and didn’t reply she continued. “I haven’t told anyone this — so if you tell Sasha out there I won’t be so gentle with your blood draw tomorrow —“ she winked. “— but last week I was out for my run and a wasp flew into the front of my shirt. She managed to wriggle under my bra and stung me good and hard — right here.” She tapped her chest over her heart at the top of her right breast.

    I smiled, weakly.

    “Not funny.” Her eyes flashed a fake scolding glare. “It hurt like hell — and I had an itchy welt there for three days.”

    “And you got right back out there?” I teased. “Is that my lesson for today?”

    Gale dropped the vials of blood gently into a pink plastic basket on her cart. “No lesson.” She shrugged. “I’m just saying that nature has it out for all of us — and there are plenty more boring ways to earn a scar than having a tree fall on your head.”

    “Boring, no. Try embarrassing.” I corrected. “Or maybe just stupid.”

    (cracking woods - part 02)

    Gaige Gildon is a fictional trail runner who lives and trains in Edmonton. After a trail accident, he quit his tech job in 2019 to focus on his recovery and his passion for outdoor adventure. In 2021 he partnered with The Cast Iron Guy blog to write and post about his upcoming pan-Canadian multi-sport trip.

  • Cracking Woods

    (serialized fiction)

    My watch had just chirped marking thirty minutes into my run, so it must have been about half past six in the morning.

    A gust of wind shoved its way through the wooded ravine. The trees responded in a wave. A roar of a hundred million rustling leaves built in crescendo puncutated by the groans and cracks of old tree limbs straining under the percussive bassline. A tiny bird erupted from the undergrowth and startled me. The waxing dawn light filtered through the stand of trees and lit the trail with an ambiant glow that cast shuddering shadows on the rough and twisting path. I was wearing my red shoes and there was a grape-sized splotch of mud on the left toe.

    These are my memories.

    The mind is funny and selective about the things it recalls.

    In fact, I felt the punch of the branch hitting my shoulder and back even before my mind registered the noise of the nearby cracking wood.

    Does sound actually travel faster than shattered chunks of wood, or did my mind prioritize the events of that moment?

    I tasted the acid bite of mud mixed with my own blood simultaneously to understanding that I was face down on the narrow path.

    The moments after that were even more ethereal. These memories of those fleeting seconds before I lost consciousness were a mix of curiosity and frustration. The gust of wind had passed. The trees were creaking as they swayed with residual momentum. My arm seemed to be nailed to the ground by a splintered piece of tree. And I couldn’t seem to reach up to pause the tracker on my GPS watch. The last thing I remember was thinking that the pace on this morning’s run was going to be shit.

    (cracking woods - part 01)

    Gaige Gildon is a fictional trail runner who lives and trains in Edmonton. After a trail accident, he quit his tech job in 2019 to focus on his recovery and his passion for outdoor adventure. In 2021 he partnered with The Cast Iron Guy blog to write and post about his upcoming pan-Canadian multi-sport trip.