Creating Space

As far back as I can remember, this is the only time/place frame where I don’t want to escape reality by taking control of a character and staring open-mouthed at the TV. Here, I want to loiter — to “linger without reason” — even though the weight of “even you” is aimed at me. A long, unreasonable pause before the shutters come down and the door is locked — though it seems it's always close to 4:30, and that intense overhead light is meant to sting my eyes forever. I look at the clothes, the hair, the faces. I look at them, and they look at the screens. Everyone’s staring, except the one in the corner, laughing with closed eyes. A single blink, and his eyes are closed forever. Meanwhile, I count the TVs. I follow the wires of the game controllers with my eyes to figure out which ones are playing together on the same screen. I need to hurry a bit. My gaze, anxious, lands on the bare, cracked wall on the right — which somehow makes the whole space feel more tactile, more real. Now I feel more present, more inside. More familiar with the space. Then my eyes drift to the posters — familiar games, familiar cars. That Lamborghini beneath a desert image of Kerman. Then Kurdistan of Iran. The piercing eyes of duplicated football players, and Che Guevara. I get lost in this dense, layered collection of frames. For a moment, a line from Yahya Dehghanpour lights up in the corner of my mind: “If we pay attention to the kinds of images hanging [on the walls], we’ll notice that the selection of photographss in each place — even without much thought given to their type — is not necessarily wrong or meaningless.” ^*

This place is full of details. I can trace all of them in my memory — in recollections or in imagination. Each corner could be stared at for hours. But again, my eyes dart off, latching onto something else. I realize an hour has passed — and I only have 600 tomans in my pocket.

from the introduction to Five Views of the Land ^*