"The God of Fortune is with you today!"

I don't think I want to believe in fortune cookies anymore. Anyway, all this Chinese take-out can't be very good for me.

And this poor bastard... If I had a beating heart that night, it would've gone out to him. Instead, I took pictures. Twenty pictures in different settings and I never got the light quite right. I should have walked straight up to him and used the flash to capture the gritty details: pimples, split-ends, stains, and smudges burned with a fluorescent glare into a cold microchip of memory. After all, he never moved. Didn't even seem like he was breathing. Was he dead? Nobody stopped to check. I could have easily taken the shot, maybe even adjusted the elements, turned the beer bottle round so I could catch the label, something like that. But something prevented me from getting this close-up. Was I scared he'd attack me? Sure. Did I think it would cross more lines than my conscience could stomach? Yeah. Maybe I was just tired, frustrated, and wanting to go home. Okay. Or I couldn't stand seeing this person any longer and walking away felt like throwing a stone into the pond, like shattering the mirror. Hay drama... Pero sige. I'll take all those possibilities, throw it in a blender and gulp it down like a smoothie.

The war photographer dream will remain as is: a fantasy.