Follow Me

chapter 1 // now i have your attention

The internet is not a dangerous place, contrary to popular belief.  Lise knows that.  It is her self made fact.  Derived from years of floating around various blog sites and message boards, exchanging messages and making friends.  It's the only place she can be herself. Share her photographs.  How can something so liberating pose any threat? Many hours Lise had spent coding her blog so that the layout reflected a photograph album.  Uploading photos of her friends, her family, her occasions.  A secret space of memories that, through its intangibility, became even more precious.  No one can take this from me.  They can take me away from it but that's where their power ends.

She and her mother had moved.  It was the only thing that hadn't needed transit.  The only thing that had arrived undamaged.

Her Nikon, however, was a different story.  The view had been cracked somewhere en route;  her mother had promised to have it fixed, but it would have to wait until they were settled.  Had money.  And so, it had stayed in a box for a month after they'd moved.  Underneath her old baby clothes and newspaper wrapped plates that likely weren't going to make it as far as the kitchen.  Old, slightly worn crap that her mother wasn't sure how they'd be useful in their new home.

'I feel bad.'  A gift.  A for-now camera; bereft of the full frame and pixelation capabilities of what she had had. 

Lise's mother put her arm around her.

'Take a photo of me.  In front of our new home.'

Lise declined.  She wanted to save it.  She wanted to wait until it was truly a happy moment.  Because the only place she could shrug off her sadness and isolation was her photographs.  Manipulating happiness out of her surroundings.  Smiles were tricks of the light.  Her friends were borrowed for an instant to suit her needs.  Composition was key.  Above all and everything else.  It made her house of cards remain just that little bit longer.

She had taken some test shots a week ago.  First venture beyond the corner shop and school.  Legs carrying her up the broad green path of Sable Hill, an area of outstanding beauty.  Plastic cups and roach ends twisted into undergrowth.  Tyre tracks.  Signs of infiltration.

If this was what passed for beauty, then Lise wasn't too optimistic.

She sat on an oak trunk and held up the camera.  Squinted her left eye.  Everything came into focus.  The Rec, as it was so called, pinned into a new focus by her camera.  Emerald green overgrown fairy land.  She felt so small.  Pasted into a landscape that could see her as lost physically as she felt mentally.

She hit the shutter again and again and again. Indiscriminate captures.  Her heart wasn't in it.  Fuck this.  Everything was different. 

**

lillise posted a photo:

My new surroundings.  Low key wanna disappear into these woods n never come out :)

savannahsmiles2013 left a note on your post:
hey, you've been posting a lot of this stuff lately. If you need to talk just shoot me a message :) I mean it.

'Lise.  Do you want some pasta for tea?'

'No thanks!'

*INBOX 1*

savannahsmiles2013:
I mean it.  I know how it feels to be..lost.  A friendly ear is always 'ere' ;)

lillise:
Haha, punning! N thnx.  I have just moved here n literally have no friends.  Everyone's known each other like forever...no room for me :(

savannahsmiles2013
It's 'thanks'. Sorry, pet peeve!
It will get better.  Give it time.  I remember feeling the same when I lived there.  The worlds much bigger, you will see.

lillise:
Haha, THANKS :)
So u don't live round here anymore?

savannahsmiles2013:
Nah, I don't.  Visit from time to time.  If you're gonna take more pics up there, please tag me.  It's like being back there :)

lillise:
Wow, cool!  Of course!  It's nice n peaceful up there tbh, let's me clear my head

Message read at 21.26