I have recently been sorting through and posting some archival photos to a family website. Some of the images are very powerful and they become an unwillingly part of your consciousness.

I was reminded of an occasion some years ago of an evening when we were having a family dinner at a fashionable restaurant while on holiday in Queenstown. We were seated in a corner table with windows on both sides that looked out onto a street. Across the street was what looked like a 1930's car -- the kind you see in gangster movies with a running board which you jump on with a machine gun. In a near-by alleyway was a man standing in the shadows dressed in a trench coat. It all seemed unreal and I commented about it to the other dinner guests and they agreed.

Then a woman came up to the restaurant window (the photo above is not her, but you get the idea) and gave me this intense penetrating gaze like someone I knew from a parallel universe.

And I did know who she was.
She had trained to be an architect.
I had known her from years back.
Then she turned quickly and walked down the street.
I had this over-powering urge to leave this cosy family scene
To join her.
But then I hesitated and then I didn't
And that's why I'm still here.