A Candle for the Darkness: An Essay in Stolen Photographs

by Roger W. Gardner

I acknowledge my deep appreciation to all of those photographers whose work I have used for this essay. I can only hope that they would approve.

Something is happening...

Something is happening here...

something bad is happening...

people are running...

running for their lives...

they're falling from the sky...

the buildings are falling...

the buildings are gone.

Everything gone.

All those people.

Gone.

Where are you?

What do I do
without you?

Why me?
Why us?
Why now?

Why us?

We must all come together now as one.
We must embrace one another in our mourning.

We must search our souls for answers.
But first we must mourn...

Of course...









not everyone is in mourning...

in fact...







some people...

seem pretty happy...

about the whole thing,
don't they?

Then again...
there are those who say...

that we deserved it.

That we had it coming.

They say, that by fighting back,
by going to war...

we're just making everything...

worse.

And sometimes it does seem...












as though every day...

more and more people...

hate us.

Maybe if we just...

kind of...








ignored it...

or...

maybe if we..

just lit a candle...

if we lit a whole bunch of candles...

we could drive away the darkness.

My friends...

this is the darkness.

And this is the candle.