Posted on Sunday, 08/28/22.

I went into the city and bought the used film camera body I had looked at the previous Thursday: a compact, silver-bodied Pentax MX that, as the shopkeeper assured me, had no issues. It is quite slick and scratchless. Given the clean shop, its endless mirrors, all of the somber middle-aged men carefully auscultating the displayed wares, I had no reason to doubt the quality. I was in fact further assured implicitly. Though, I am never sure how cautious to be in buying used wares. In a moment of panic I purchased new batteries for it, the camera, which he replaced himself, the shopkeeper, having said that it contained test batteries. Given that the battery operates only the light meter, and that these cameras are known to operate for years on a single batterial doublet, I felt dumb. In almost no case should I have worried and paid the extra ￥440. I wonder if he thought I was an amateur. If he smiled slyly to himself when I had gone, shaking his head. When I was inspecting the camera before buying, he having retrieved it from its glass case and placed it on the counter for me, I had no sense of how long to continue trying to act as if I were discerning. As if I knew. I turned it this way and that. I brought it close to my face and peered at the mirrors and ground glass within. I cocked the cloth shutter and released it with a complex click. I brought out one of my lenses A Pentax SMC-M 135mm f3.5 which, in its length and against the purposefully diminutive body of the MX, looked a little silly. I saw a copy of this lens for sale also below the Pentax bodies for ￥6600, which meant I had gotten a good deal. from deep in my bag and coupled it amateurishly to the body of the camera, staring through the viewfinder at a nearby shelf, also full of cameras. All appeared well. The viewfinder was a little dusty, but bright. The advance lever snapped easily from position to position. For the most part I find photography pretty much entirely lame as is mostly practiced, seeing it as essentially selfish and low effort. I am rarely moved by still images, except when they are mine and depict things that I care about. I am just kleptomaniacal about still images, covetous of their role in documenting what I want to be seen, and this extends to the cutely ratcheting mechanisms make them. Thinking more about this now I don’t think I hate photographers I personally know, or those who take photos privately, or for purpose of dry documentation. I don’t hate many dead photographers, whose books populate cute shops on hip streets. Maybe I just dislike influencers, or fashion photographers, or the wispy men, like I may someday become, who argue about the latest CMOS sensor types and mirrorless gizmos whose prices extend indefinitely and whose effect on the photos they take of their dogs and wire fences is inexplicably nauseating. I am so worried about being lost in the terrain of gear. Ditto for productivity methods, diet plans, pop-up shops, clothing, etc. I am unable to reconcile some sort of sadness about not being very cool or present or encyclopedic or honestly vain and some sort of immediate revulsion at people who aren’t slick enough to hide the work that their achieving of these things through waiting in lines or obsessing over forums or buying tickets and expensive little Leica lenses.

This is part of why I like this small site. Part of why I like writing small little soft sentences. They are almost nothing. You get them for free. I have tricked you into doing all of the work of unpacking their glyphic interstices. I watched a video recently of the owner of a desert lizard using small tweezers to remove the molted calyces of skin around its eyes and nose, after which the lizard looked pleased. Think of it like you are the holder of the tweezers, in this scenario.

The rest of the day was another long loop around Tokyo, which I have decided to stop doing because it is a little boring only hitting the major city centers: 新宿、渋谷、代々木、青山（と表参道）、原宿、など. I stopped at another small used bookstore リズム＆ブックス（渋谷） which had interesting old magazines, though nothing was bought. I decided to sit down in a small well-rated cafe from a quick google search, only to discover that its major service was to have the barista discuss with you (at length, using involved descriptive terminology) the type of coffee drink you wanted (roast level, acidity, bitterness, temperature, etc.) before painstakingly constructing your order according to a custom blend of different bean varietals which were then ground, sieved, bloomed, and extracted before their distillate was placed in a very fancy cup beside some even fancier small sweet snacks. I apologized to the barista for not being more descriptive, though he was very kind. The two men next to me discussed their taste in watches with another employee. Two younger part-time staff tended the much more casual take-out side of the shop, which I eyed wistfully. A child ran around idyllically while his father watched, sipping his very fancy coffee. It rained gently the whole day, on and off, and the shop Cafe ROSTRO: 渋谷, on a side-street, encouraged a small cross breeze between a narrow low window and the main doors. The coffee took maybe fifteen minutes to prepare, along and behind others’ orders, and alternately the smell of roasted beans, toasted bagels, blooming grounds, and heated sweetened sugar pastries wafted. Despite embarrassment at the beginning the hour or so spent in the shop was pleasant and recuperative.

The previous night I also went to the specialty coffee place in 厚木 カフェ鈴木 which is open until midnight most days and is something I will write about another time. I expect I will go again. It is a curious place full of both individuals and those clearly on dates (many wildly different in age). The coffee is delicate, well-made, but also slightly humorous in its extremity, in the ways it is prepared, and in the atmosphere of the place in relation to the people who are inside of it. I wonder where it leads them afterwards, the ones on dates.