The end was a long time ago.

I’d been postponing scanning the thousands and thousands of negatives because of technical concerns. Now that I’m using an excellent, five-thousand dollar film scanner, I got my first look at the conceptual considerations.

As I looked at my first box of negatives to decide which ones to scan, I realized this was probably the last time anyone, including myself, will ever see these images again. I’ll keep the negatives until I die, but I’ll probably never pull them out of storage.

I’m conscious that I’m editing my memories. I didn’t scan my negatives of Jyothi. I may never see her again, and my visual record of her limited to a small, low-resolution notebook entry. My 1997 trip to Rhodes will be represented by two images, my 1993 trip to Banff by none. And so on.

2005 promises to be an interesting year.

I don’t care, since the one thing I do know is that I’ll never receive the award since it’s in my memory.

“Happy new year to you, too,” she said after an awkward pause.

Later, she came by for a chat.

“I’m sorry,” Louisa apologized, “but my innocent mind didn’t register what you said in the hall. From now on, I will always think of you as Mister Debauched.”

I told her that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all year, and I meant it.

Thanks to modern scientists, I now know why I’m even more behind schedule than I was a couple of weeks ago.

“David,” he enthused, “you have to cash in on this scam! They’re paying for pixels the size of watermelons!”

“Maderas or Sangrias?” I asked.

Fernando was flummoxed, but it didn’t matter whether the pixels are as big as Maderas (six to ten kilograms) or Sangrias (ten to twelve kilograms). I won’t go to Iowa for any amount of money.

I looked through my notes for over a hundred ideas in progress [sic] database, and found a project using telex tape that I’d never started. Today’s piece is one of those intentionally cryptic pieces that’s not spectacular, but I like it. It gets the message across, at least for Klara.