Group-portrait at age 67

I've just reached the age when it's not the photographer seeing me as I am when he or she takes the picture but the camera seeing me the way I am and then taking the picture.

I do my best imitation of a smile. It's kind of a yellow smile, with slightly mis-matched front teeth. My nose gets in the way; it didn't used to but it does now. The eyes are the eyes of someone who is too often tempted to think he's seen almost everything; one of them stares directly at the camera and the other does too, but like it can't quite believe what it's seen. Snap away camera, I say to myself, snap away, what you're seeing is the way I really am but it may not last for long.

The divisions in our society are not only caused by income inequalities, they're as much or more the division between those people capable of introspection and those who aren't. This is the way I see things now, having spent time around people incapable of introspection, most of them completely disinterested in the whole notion. These kind of people are often action figures, and no matter what they've done, what kind of omission or oversight or crime they've committed, they're able to look into the camera and smile and make the camera believe they're just like us and really do care about others.