[syndicate] dad

[Alan Sondheim]

dad

in 1940 this was my dad's last chance at happiness. the glacier was still
there. he used a kodak 620 camera and the colour was beautiful. it's
always sad when the image fades, you have to use your imagination, just
what it was like. and you try to imagine what the sounds were, so you
think it might have been cool out and there might have been a slight
breeze. you can't remember what he told you about the season and how it
was with the war on, france was just over the horizon. he said you could
see the matterhorn. i don't know where he was going, i can't imagine how
he got out of there and he never talked about it. he said it was silent up
there and you could forget everything else in the world and the sky was
clear, not a plane in sight. i don't know what he did when he got off the
wall. i think he might have walked to one side or another, playing with
the depth of the world which descended farther than any of us could
imagine. we weren't alive then. he managed to make it out, that's hardly a
smile on his face and in later years he never smiled. never. was that a
minox he was holding. there wasn't a person in sight. he looks almost
blind. i found this stuff somewhere in the attic. he'd dragged a trunk up
after the flood and most of the stuff in it was alright. the trunk had to
be thrown out. there were photos drying everywhere.

http://www.asondheim.org/photoalp16.jpg