Vinson Cunningham

“He was a moving statue, made to stand in a great square and eke out noise. He mattered and didn’t, just as my own history did and didn’t. Just like the fathers I knew, who were there—they cast huge shadows and never sank—but were also ciphers, names that survived in our minds because of how deftly they evaded stable meaning. I wondered too—here my mind sharpened and wouldn’t let me skim—if I’d be this kind of silty half-entity for my own daughter. I knew that I wanted to be more than a Rorschach, more legible than a symbol, more vivid and musical, at least to the kid, than even the most laureled statue could ever be. I wanted to be real in a way that history wasn’t, and realized, listening to the new president, that I didn’t yet know how, couldn’t fathom where to begin. I pulled out my phone and opened the camera, stretched my arm unprayerfully toward the stage and took a picture. For”
― Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations