Stray photo

 

     This is weird. So my wife and I have dinner on Wednesday. We light candles for Hanukah. We watch a little TV, endure the president's pathetic rant. About 10 p.m., I walk the dog.
     Back at home, I go to post my photo of the four candles on the blog — I figure, this is a year to be Jewish a little more prominently. Show we're not afraid. I'm not afraid, anyway. Not yet.
     I look at my photos, and there's the black and white photo above, the most recent photo. I didn't take it, didn't download it, don't know the person in the photo or how it got there.
     I asked Prof. Google to explain. The possibilities ranged across the board. Shared by somebody with access. Hacked somehow. I had a hard time believing it was something done intentionally. What would be the point? A test? Next time it'll be something vile. The cops will bust in, and the incriminating evidence will be spattered across my phone. 

     Nah. That can't be. Maybe the photo was transmitted years ago and somehow, through some alignment of the planets, congealed on my phone. Strange stuff happens.
      Several times in recent months, a random Facebook video was sent by me to my son. Only I didn't send it. This seems something like that. An artifact, a glitch. When you consider how pervasive these networks are, how omnipresent the phones, in our hands for hours, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. I am using an iPhone 12, and have been poised to get a new phone —the 16 or the 17, anybody notice a difference? They cost about the same.

     My wife urged me not to post the photo — it's not a kid we know, but someone's kid, unless it's an AI composite, and children should be kept offline as much as possible, lest their images be seized and put to unspeakable purposes. I made a pouty face, and she then suggested I do an image search, which I did. Turns out the photo was posted to X the day before I saw it, by the Paris Review, along with a quote from the poet Alice Oswald. A blip from a network I signed up for years ago but now seldom visit. 

     Oswald is an English poet of considerable renown. Of course I looked at her oeuvre, starting with "Severed head floating downriver," which seemed apt for this occasion. It begins:

It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to
pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River
Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting,
filling up with water and floating way.

And ends: 

    this is how the wind works hard at thinking
    this is what speaks when no one speaks

   I deleted the photo from my phone. But the unease lingers. These devices, they're cracks in our lives. Our light shines out, wanly and is largely ignored. Meanwhile, all sorts of stuff seeps in.