night drifting © Lilly Schwartz 2011

Yesterday’s picture was again one where I was balancing my camera on the parapet of a bridge, but this time taken with my wide angle converter which explains the cut-offs on the corners. I was standing there for quite a bit to catch that train, but it was well worth it.

Last night I also had one of these very odd experiences that one sometimes has in big cities. You know, the ones where you suddenly feel compelled to say: “The bigger the city, the crazier the people”. I was trying to take a picture of one of those bars in front of which usually unemployed drunks shout at each other intermitted by raucous or shrill laughter. It was already dark and the bar was lit in lots of colourful lights which made it look almost cool. Well, almost. Outside there were a man and a woman sitting and the woman was speaking in a harsh voice of a situation that happened to her in court apparently. Let me recapitulate what she said:

“And the judge said: ‘We have reason to believe that someone hired this man to harm your ex-wife. Did you have anything to do with this?’ And I said ‘No, of course not, I wouldn’t do anything to harm her. I’d rather harm myself than her … well, unless … well, unless she fucked with me …’ And the judge was like “What?! Are you aware of what you’re saying?’ – ‘ Yeah, but … no! Don’t misunderstand me, if she’d fuck with me I’d kill her, I’d fuck her up, but see … she didn’t, so that’s that’ And like that wasn’t totally clear the judge asks me again ‘So, did you or did you not hire this man to harm your ex-wife?’ and I said ‘Listen, if I’d want to fuck her up I wouldn’t hire anyone, I’d do it myself, that’s a matter of pride!’ – ‘I’m really not sure whether you’re aware of what you’re saying, but I interpret this as a No’ – ‘Yeah, I’d swear to that, I have no fucking need to hire some dude to fuck her up …’ And the judge says: ‘So you would like to swear that you didn’t hire this man to harm your ex-wife?’ and pulls out a bible. So I swore to the fucking bible that I’d fuck her up myself and wouldn’t hire this bloke. Man, would you believe that judge didn’t get what I was saying. You understand me right?”

And while this woman was talking I was standing there trying to take a picture of this bar, trying to get the exposure just right because it was a difficult mix of light and darkness. When the woman finished her enchanting little story I had also managed to take the picture and decided that it was time to get away from these weirdos! And this wasn’t even the only weird moment of my evening!

In the end life really writes the most messed up characters. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to …