It’s a hot, bright day downtown some years ago. The picture sums up the look of the city at that time pretty well. It’s all there: The cars and motorcycles, the roughly painted crosswalks, the somewhat dilapidated buildings, the street signs which, if you look closely, even give the name of the town and the street. All laid out in ordered space under the burning glare of noon.
The only person in the picture is this boy on a motorcycle, and the rest of the scene radiates from him; in fact he holds the picture together, and gives it human meaning. He was really there, an actual person. And he seems worried about something. Maybe something really terrible.
But it wouldn’t add to the picture to know that. Everyone has private sorrows, and if I had asked him, he might have told me his- but to what purpose? Neither he nor I would be better off for it. He would only have added his sorrows to my own, and who needs more?
But in the picture, sitting there and frowning in the sun, he illuminates the world around him, the world he lives in. There’s a real purpose in that.
