Somewhere around Amiens

Seen from above, maybe one or two storeys up and distant. An open window, sunlit, early or late as the light is very direct and tinted yellowish, in a warmer season than this. The face of an old man leaning into the frame created by the window, two-thirds profile, lightly bearded as if ordinarily he shaves. The pictures are very similar, they have been taken in sequence with a camera that is not fixed to a tripod, possibly with a burst function or manual repetition. With each successive photograph he is further into the frame, leaning forward towards something, or trying to rise. He bears an expression of discomfort or irritation. His eyes are blue and pink and watery. There are at least a dozen images in the series, which is run through several times, but nothing gives any clue as to why the pictures have been taken, of this subject, from a remote vantage point.

Then the girl in carriage 18, seat 52 goes back to watching action movies on her laptop, the glossy keyboard surround surfaces of which she strokes occasionally as if to remove perceived dust. I go back to my book and read the page twice over without the text sinking in because as guilty as I ought to feel for peeking out of the corner of my eye at the scenes on my neighbour's fold-down tray, I cannot stop thinking about the old man, and the person who took his photograph, from a distance, in sequence.