I was going through my shelf-load of photography handbooks, because I’m taking some time off tomorrow to take some photos, play tourist, stuff like that, and I needed a reference from a certain handbook.
Well, what you know, the handbook is not to be found.
Lost when I moved? Lent to someone that kept it? Misplaced?
I don’t know.
I could re-order it for about five bucks – which I hate as a matter of principle.

On the other hand, I found an old hardback copy of Ernest Hemingway Green Hills of Africa, among my photo handbooks.
It had been used as a signpost when that other handbook was taken out.

It’s been twenty years at least since I last checked out Hemingway.
Green Hills of Africa was a gift from my mother, that as a girl had been through the whole Hemingway catalog. Hemingway and Pavese where her secretary girl’s way to “get a culture” back in the ’50s.
It’s a weird thing, finding it here, and now. It’s probably my favorite book by Hemingway. And I think I’ll read it again.
Because I miss my mother, and I’d love to be far away, on the savanna, with my camera instead of an elephant rifle.

It does happen, sometimes, that we find a book that feels like a letter from the past, isn’t it so?

I’ll keep you posted.