Photograph/Nickleback

The first one is of an elephant that no longer has a face. It looks like someone has used a powersaw to cross-section its skull, then taken a baseball bat to whatever was inside. I suppose there’s no neat and tidy way of removing tusks.

The second one shows two people sitting in the back of a car. The woman on the right looks calmly terrified. The man on the left is holding a gun to her head. He’s smoking and by the expression on his face, you’d think he was at a bar with some friends. The caption says that the woman was killed one hour later.

The third one is more personal, less dramatic. It hangs on my wall, and was taken at one of our numerous get-togethers. That’s when we all worked at Case Mix Research, which the people down the hall nicknamed Cake Mix Research, because we always seemed to be celebrating something. It was the kind of place where you felt you could have your cake and eat it too. Unfortunately it didn’t defy all platitudes, and all good things did come to an end. The research group folded, two of the group had a falling out, two others moved away and kept in selective touch only. I’m not sure how I feel when I look at the photograph of us all together, and wonder sometimes if I should take it down and put it in a box at the back of my closet.