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An old sepia photo can be a bullet. It can tear through the lineup of neurons, neatly lined up like socks on a bed. It can make you aware that you are your latest incarnation. That you have been here before.

A mother and her child. Doesn't that child look familiar? Who remembers his own birth? Especially when it was 70 years ago? Today I am 27. I have been 27 many times now, projecting myself a year into the future so that I could live as 27 for a year, then my past self projecting himself a year into the future to kill that 27 year old so he could be 27 for a year. And on and on. A perverse immortality that requires my yearly death. A death at the hands of myself.

But this year I have discovered love. Corny? That's what my 26 year old self would have said. But I know the truth now -- about love and my adolescent ambition. It's all in this photograph. And to keep my love, I must kill my yearly past visitor before he kills me. That way I can live. That way I can love. And that way I can die an old man.

Here he comes now. He looks determined. But I am a year older. And much wiser.