Next To You

Found footage, cap­tured with my small CCD cam­corder. It strug­gles in low light sit­u­a­tions, but when I brought up the lev­els in post, out came this amaz­ing grain that gives it such a wist­ful tex­ture.

When watch­ing this, my eyes tend to grav­i­tate to her hands; the way she moves them with a light, but firm touch, whether it’s get­ting Dolly to sit down, or brush­ing cat hair from her nose. They were artists hands. Not par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing, but filled with del­i­cate dex­ter­i­ty. Sometimes, I’d kiss the tip of each fin­ger, and she’d tease me by pulling her hand away before I could fin­ish.

It must have been one win­ter morn­ing, after a run out to Second Cup with their hol­i­day-themed paper cups, watch­ing The Blue Planet in the com­fort of a blan­ket with a cat by our side.

Only after find­ing this footage did I start to believe that my mem­o­ries were real, and not just imag­i­na­tions caught between the haze of desire and denial.

We existed. We existed.

Even if only for a few moments, as won­der­ful as they were fleet­ing, one of them cap­tured in 24 frames per sec­ond.

9 comments

  1. Utterly gor­geous. Heartbreaking in a way. But love­ly.

    • I think it’s amaz­ing that some­thing can be described as both heart­break­ing and love­ly. They’re not adjec­tives on oppo­site sides of the same spec­trum, even though they both sort of con­tra­dict. Love can be so many things at once.

  2. very nice. very sweet and cosy. those are the moments I love best — they every­day close­ness with some­one you love.

    • I was going to write about how it’s the com­fort­ing famil­iar­i­ty — the small pecks instead of the pas­sion­ate kiss­es — I used to enjoy the most, but when I thought about it, I real­ly could­n’t decide on my favourite part of it all. There were too many won­der­ful things that hap­pened for me to pick between them.

  3. I agree with Xibee.

    I think it’s real­ly cool when you make these videos with the girls you’re dat­ing. Most normal/average girls would find it weird, but since you’re so cool, I think it takes even more extra­or­di­nary women to agree to it and find it ordi­nary or even charm­ing. I know I’d think it was weird at first, but then again, I’d want to do the same thing with peo­ple I’d date. I end­less­ly doc­u­ment­ed every­thing with N when we were first dat­ing.

    • It def­i­nite­ly does take some­one extra­or­di­nary to under­stand (and appre­ci­ate) why I post these videos of some­thing long past. For me, it’s not just about cap­tur­ing a moment to make sure it lasts, it’s to express a feel­ing of love, to show to the world how sim­ple hap­pi­ness to be, and not every­one gets that.

  4. Also, the title reminds me of the Carpenter song “Close to You,” which breaks my heart at the same time it makes it soar.

    • The title is actu­al­ly from the song by Bebel Gilberto. I’ll have to look up this Carpenters song; I’ve always liked Karen Carpenter’s voice.

      • You’ll have to look it UP?!!

        Ohmygod I’m such a fos­sil ::sobs::

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