What were you looking at this month?

The month is about to change again.
Like clicking a shutter, I want to leave one question behind.

The location of afterimages

A month is a surprisingly long time.
It is 24 hours times 30 days, which equals 720 hours.
Yet, when I look back, only enough scenery to fit in the palm of my hand remains.

When I carry a camera, the difference between the moments burned into my eyes and the moments I passed by becomes clear.
Even though both existed within the same time, only one forms an image.

Where is the boundary between what remains and what disappears?
Holding that question, I kept pointing my lens throughout this month.

A record of one's gaze

I ask myself, 'What was the thing I looked at most this month?'
It might be people's faces. It might be the color of the sky. It might be the screen of my smartphone.

What I turned my eyes toward is exactly what I turned my consciousness toward.
A record of one's gaze is close to a record of how one lives.

The answer does not have to be just one.
Because multiple afterimages overlap to create the depth of this month.

How the light shines in

In the mornings in Taito Ward, light shines into the alleys as if cutting through them diagonally.
Every time I see that light, I feel that the day is not just beginning, but being offered to me.

What kind of light has shone into your life this month?
Was there something soft that reached you from an unexpected angle?

Memories grow in the margins.
On days when I was busy, the small scenes that slipped into the gaps are what begin to shine later on.

Passing the question to the next month

Rather than holding the answer alone, when you share a question with someone, the memory takes on a different color.
When voices saying 'Come to think of it, me too' overlap, experiences that seemed lonely begin to connect like tributaries of a river.

Putting things into words is like a developing solution that fixes memories.
If you do not bring them to the surface, the image will dissolve into the darkness.

I believe that concluding is not about closing, but about passing things on to the next.
If you were to remember what you were looking at this month somewhere next month, what kind of scenery would it be?

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