Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Short Fiction

automobiles,” he writes in The Walk , “as they coldly and maliciously ride into children’s games, into children’s paradise, such that innocent little human beings are now in danger of being crushed to a pulp.”

A DEAD CENTER OF SORTS

Of all Valéry’s musings on attention—texts he never managed to group together into a cohesive essay, despite the attempt published as Mémoire sur l’attention —one in particular makes me think of photography: “An initial phase of attention is often followed by a void, a kind of undefined ocular and psychic standstill. It is a dead center of sorts.” What happens when I take a picture? There’s a subject or event, amid the flow of things, that strikes my eye: a new expression on a baby’s face, the way some friends are gathered at a table, a plant or statue in some foreign park. The camera forces me to evaluate the light, choose how to frame the scene, focus, stand still, and release the shutter. All these steps are reminiscent of two metaphors on attention, both penned by Valéry: the optical metaphor, or attention as a focusing of perception and intellect; and the muscular metaphor,

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