Rating:  1 out of 5 Bullets

The Sony Mavica MVC-FD7 was one of the first digital cameras that recorded the images onto a removable disc. Sadly that disc was a 3.5″ 1.44mb floppy disc. The MVC-FD7 was precided by the MVC-FD5 the only difference being that the FD7 has a 10x zoom. Both cameras boast an astounding 0.3 megapixels, so you might be able to print photos up to 4×6 if you’re lucky. The MVC-FD7 came out in late 1997 and was a hit in the American market selling at prices around $900.

Pros:

• 10x optical zoom
• Big screen for the era (2″ across)
• Looks like it came from the 90′s

Cons:

• 0.3 megapixels
• Boxy
• Slow
• Takes a 3.5″ floppy disc
• Menu hard to navigate

All in all this camera was probably pretty cool when it came out, but 15 years later who even has a computer that takes a 3.5″ floppy? Not to mention 0.3 megapixels, thats worse than cell phones made 7 years ago. The only reason to look for this camera would be to add to your silly hipster outfit.

Available at The Dark Room (www.darkroomofmontana.com), or by mugging that kid at the art show. 

by Caroline McCarty

Gum on Boat Shoe, by Caroline McCarty

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, shoes had much softer soles than footwear today. The softer soles allowed detectives to sneak around much more stealthily and efficiently. Thus, detectives were given the nickname “Gumshoe” and detective work was referred to casually as “gumshoeing”.

Here at High Contrast Review, we like to take a gumshoe approach to collecting artifacts and information, within reason, of course. Make yourself scarce, lurk in the shadows, or, if you must approach and interact with a subject, wear a disguise.

Have you done any gumshoeing lately? Do you have any clever disguises? Tell us about it! It is only appropriate to tell us via our anonymous tips form.

SK's Gear, Geneva, Switzerland, 2009

I was a lucky child. I never missed love.

The Boss

He was a man’s man. The boss. A womanizer. A drinker. A delicious pregnant-pauser. James Tiberius Kirk stole my heart in ‘82. Sexy, sweaty Captain Kirk. Handsome, oh yes, but pretty plumage never ruffled my feathers. It was the heavy magnetism—the raw, powerful heat that oozes from the pores of a man in charge; leadership layered dirty with the carnal appetites of a male in his prime. Hot.

He was my only human supervision for an hour each weekday afternoon. Well, I suppose Bones and O’Hura and Scotty were human, but they mostly panicked and pushed buttons and took orders and just plain ignored me. I don’t blame them. They sure as hell didn’t need some grungy little kid clogging up the deck and getting that puritan Spock waxing logical about the dangers of a prehistoric brat aboard the ship. But the captain was the captain, so he beamed me up anyway.

At precisely four P.M. mountain time, we embarked on our daily intergalaxial tours, battled breeding tribbles, theorized social and medical cures for distressed planets with troubled sister suns, spun donuts through the Universe—I have since learned that it’s now intelligent to call it the ‘Multiverse’—and absolutely got sucked into every pothole and black hole and other such phenomena involving holes in our path, and I would say that most of the time I could overlook his make-out sessions with the green bombshell that crawled out of every planet’s hole. Even at eight I realized this man had to have his space.

I run into my sweetheart once in a while, out on a Saturday night on one of the backstreet stations, still up to his old tricks. He hasn’t aged a bit. The celestial life suits him. And he has no idea who I am anymore, so I duck down low and turn the channel.

The Sentinel

A white glow-in-the-dark owl doubled as my bodyguard and key ring. Protection from bus to house was his main gig. For many faithful years, he worked two hours in the morning and two at night while my folks made a forty-mile commute.

He was a shiny, aggressive thing with pert plastic ear triangles scouting the nebular quadrants and countless dimensions and uncharted solar systems for boogey men. Big round eyes pierced through every façade for possible danger: “Ha. Go ahead, mess with this child. All they’ll find of you is a puke-pile of bones.”

Once, he got lost in a snowstorm. I must say, of all the places I ever lived, it would blizzard like a wild hairy bitch on that prairie. Wind and more goddamn wind and blowing snow and wind. My fingers were always cold because mittens were an extravagance in the eighties on account of a recession or a mitten shortage caused by a scarcity of gas and money, I guess, and he and his white body slipped from my grasp into the snowy void between the bus and the house. I couldn’t find him at all. A child can’t always see details. Like how alone they are. Like how isolation can render them stunted in the ability to bond with real people in real ways.

I looked and looked through the blinding snow, and when my search failed, I dried my icy tears and set a cold little shoe to the highway beyond the drive. Setting my coordinates to the course of those forty miles to town, hoping to meet my parents somewhere in between, I cast off thoughts of imminent death in the storm and neverminded the old German neighbor lady a mile back who would have been tickled to entertain me in her warm sauerkrauty house. At eight we don’t stop to think about these things. But that owl, ever sensitive to danger, was thinking. He wasn’t just going to melt into the snow like some dead dove. He was a warrior, dammit! A raptor, for crissakes! AN OWL! That bad bird sent out piercing screams so dynamic and invisibly acute that only moms and dads and mice are able to perceive, because I made it only a half mile into the blustering snow before my folks heard and intersected the trek.

And isn’t it true that parents always find the lost thing? The sentinel was back in charge, mildly ruffled, angry and determined, now even more watchful of me, his charge. In those final years while he stood guard he never vanished again, and for that afternoon, anyway, I made it home in time to juice up the tube and…go…where…no man…has gone… before… He kept vigilant watch while I did. This clown, Kirk, had better fly a straight line.

The Tempest and His Mother

His name was Eric, and he was a thin, tidy and pressed Eddie Haskell son-of-a-kid with red hair. His mother was pretty and plump, though by today’s standards I think she was probably just right. Maybe her name was Roxy. She wore pinup lipstick and had more freckles than skin and I thought she made the loveliest mother. Oh, I guess my own mother was all right, and I sure love the hell out of her now, but Roxy looked like she would probably care if I combed my hair or took baths or brushed my already rotten teeth, and maybe, I thought, if I had someone like her to remind me to comb or bathe or brush I might have friends. Her husband was a reckless, nameless tall drink of cowboy firewater, and they would come over to play cards with my parents on Friday nights. I can only wonder what she thought about my condition.

Once dinner was done, Eric and I would take a walk in the field, sit on the ridge of the pond and stare at the prairie beyond. I hated that fucking prairie, even then. Why would any Indian ever want to live out here? Why did I have to live here? There was no adventure here. Just an alien wasteland in winter and a dry griddle in summer, and a ceaseless bully of a wind that beat the hell out of everything in the way. No running water. Crackly, sparse grass. No healthy trees. Pebbles and sand. An ocean of alkali—a Dead without the Sea. Frantic jackrabbits popping in and out of holes and skeletal coyotes stabbing their heads in after them to scrounge up a meal of the mangy scent. An aloof railroad track and ditches littered with dead dogs. Furious tornado clouds boiling above the trailer house where I sat for hours each day, every day, alone.

I read much later that pioneer women fought the prairie by committing suicide. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry they couldn’t move away. I felt sorry that I couldn’t move away. I wanted to live in Fountain where my cousins lived. Where my aunt and uncle and sweet Grandma Winifred lived. I wanted to be surrounded by trees and lilacs and irises and babbling brooks and stores and green lawns and buy hamburger-shaped bubble gum at Mayfield’s Grocery like the rest of the civilized world. Instead, I was an unwilling squatter on the brutal plains, and squatting next to me was a hormonal Romeo that insisted on knocking old Kirk out of the running.

He was a year my senior and I liked older men. Oh, that’s a damn lie—I didn’t know what the hell I liked. He offered to teach me to French kiss out there on that thirsty ridge, more than once. That’s the truth. Probably every Friday night he asked. Never tried, just proposed. Never pushed too hard.

“Hey, you ever kissed a guy?”

“Sure, plenty.”

“I think you haven’t.”

“Oh, sure. All the time.”

“I can teach you, if you want.”

It was tempting, and I admired his style, but I wasn’t giving in to any sort of wind. I told him I was sorry that he loved me, but I was involved in a long-distance relationship, light-years away.

Sometimes I wonder about him. He defended me at school, when he could. I believe he tried in earnest to be my friend. He must have been pretty wind-blown living out there, too, so I guess I should have kissed him. And, you know, the captain would have had it coming.

The Australian Acadian

My twin and real best friend was a ferocious Cajun outlaw that my mom adopted when I was born. Well, Cajun only in name—but the outlaw ran through and through—he was the meanest dingo I ever met, but he never stole anybody’s baby. He was half Queensland Blue Heeler, little, shy of thirty-five pounds, and boasted a beautiful, shiny black coat ticked with white.

The most notorious characteristic he held was his love to sic. Thoroughly got some feral outback adrenaline fix out of it. His bloodlines and cunning said he was no stranger to the treachery of the prairie and he was the one to have on your side if you could choose only one.

Sometimes, at horse shows, I would find myself coaxing other children to pound on the window of the truck to get him mean. He’d froth and beat the inside of the window with his body and you could count every single tooth if you tried. The kids would just scream with delight. Then, the truck door would magically open, and they would still be screaming, all right.

I don’t quite know how it opened. Maybe he opened it himself. I would never have opened a truck door to let an angry dog bite poor little kids. That is something nobody should ever do. I never did that. Even if those kids laughed at me and said I was dirty or poor or smelly or that my dad was a drunk.

And they were wrong. He was a recovering drunk.

Cajun knew all kinds of tricks, too, besides the attack dog bit. He was quite an actor. My dad used to ask him if he would rather be ‘married or dead’. I should have taken his advice. Dead, we all know, is the recommended choice of nine out of ten dogs. He could sing and hold a tune. He could ride horses and beat up other dogs—big nasty Dobermans, which, I’m sure we all remember were the nation’s status quo pooch of the early eighties—by breaking their legs. Okay, that only happened once. He carried his own leash in his mouth when signs said he should be leashed, so I’m pretty sure he could read. He served as pillow when I was sick. He was very kind to kittens and usually to humans when his family didn’t hold the influence. He was in every family photo. He got preferential seating on family outings before air conditioning was standard in cars. He faithfully enjoyed our four o’clock outings to outer space. He was more than the sum of these parts.

It burns me up when people say: It’s just a dog. What do they mean, it’s just a dog? Is that just a child? Just anything? That wasn’t just a dog. He was a people. He was more of a people than most people I know. He needed love, and companionship, and respect, and attention, and love and more love. And that mean little shit gave it back by the load. That’s what dogs and children need. That’s what they do.

He died when we were twenty-one years old. Just transported up to the Enterprise with the angels at the seasoned age of 147 people years. This is proof that healthy food and healthy lifestyle do not replace the life-lengthening effects of giving your loved ones real jobs, like putting them in charge of child security, and electing them to an important position in the family, like public relations, and assuring they are way above your children in pecking order in the ongoing efforts to extend their short little furry lives.

My mother has rarely owned a pet that didn’t outlive their age expectancy. And, come to think of it, I don’t think Cajun ever got a bath. Maybe that is something. Maybe dirt glues a soul and body together. Maybe I will live a long life because of all the baths I missed. I have taken steps to reduce my lifespan by taking many, many baths since.

The Much Older Man

Twenty-six is a hundred in horse years, but he’d still buck off any tough guy with a point to prove. These fools—my dad called them ‘dudes’, which in the cowboy world is a pretty derogatory word—would limp away, if they could, and my dad would laugh loud enough to get their attention so they could watch me, a chunky, uncoordinated kid, shimmy up the horse, scrambling all the way, heave a jerk and kick to the flank, now in the gut, then land an accidental, but rough and careless smack to the bony rump with the heel of my sister’s boots, three sizes too big. That old haggard mount, bucking with the zest of a yearling seconds earlier, would sigh, lick his lips and plant his feet. He’d turn around and see if I had made it on, wait to see if I needed more time.

I’d bend over in the saddle and smell his raggedy mane. I loved his stink. Dirt and sweat and hay and horsemusk, if there is such a thing, and fire. He was gaunt—a sorrel—a gangly and skinny Rocinante. Terry was his name. He had been a fairly successful local racehorse in his early years, and then he stepped down to county pony races in middle age. He was the one to beat, and it was rare. Some competitors were known to load their horses back up in the trailer when they saw us arrive.

We were a sight to behold, I tell you. Here we’d come, all crammed into a bumping backfiring rust bucket of a truck hitched to a little blue horse trailer that read in big white letters: “JOJO & TRACI CIZEK-QUARTER HORSES,” which was a laugh, because I, the second half of the all-caps-sister-duo, was far more interested in the contents of the concession stand than in Quarter Horses as a route to happiness management. A more accurate sign would have read: “JOJO LIKES TROPHIES AND TRACI LIKES PIZZA.”

Out he’d hop—the tall, homely champion; far from a beauty by any horseman criteria, yet I found him excessively beautiful—and away they’d go down the road, pissed they’d spent the gas. They could have bought their children mittens.

In the meantime, my grown sister and his usual rider, in selfless effort to aid me in the winning of the ribbon—that’s story she sticks with—instructed me to use a racing bat to ‘ask’ him to run faster when my turn was near. I was indeed eager for the blue, being prompted with cheers and hoots and such from my comrades in the concession stand, though my feet were miles from the stirrups and my fingers could barely wrap around the horn. I don’t know that I ever troubled myself to hold the reins, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I was never in control.

I whacked that old sweetheart with that bat—not a proud moment—and we shot through space. Those boots, still three sizes too big, rocketed away as my body floated, weightless, from the saddle. Whipping like a white flag, I just had to hang on for one last chance to see the captain, yet in my heart I knew I was a goner. I clutched the horn with all my might, closed my eyes, pursed my lips and gave in to warp speed.

Suddenly, and just at that strangely quiet and peaceful second when the blade of doomed fate softens into a blanket of numb resignation, the red lover stopped. Sighed. Licked his lips and planted his feet. Turned around to see if I had made it. I think he might have expressed a little mild, albeit entertained, concern that I was hanging from the horn on one side, bootless feet dangling three feet above the sand. When our eyes met, we grinned at each other like the lone survivors of a shootout.

“Holy shit,” I heard. “Holy shit, kid! You all right?!!” To spoil the moment of excitement and shared relief, a valiant hero hops the fence to save the little child from the awful runaway racehorse—I knew this part of the story well. I dropped to the dirt. In stocking feet, I ran to get the boots. The scene wasn’t going to be pretty and I wanted out fast.

Terry was quickly slipping into fight mode. First, he’d forget all about me. He’d take one sniff of that approaching dude and snort. Then he’d lay his ears back, asking him if he felt lucky. As I ran for the safety of the bleachers, I swear I heard the snap of Doberman bone and the maniacal laugh of my twin dingo.

It was Christmas Day when I said goodbye to my noble steed. My family was moving to Black Forest. I was thrilled that I was finally getting a reprieve from the prairie and moving to where tall pine trees replaced tumbleweeds; where the sinister wind that carried the voices of those dead train-track dogs and pioneer women would suffocate and die under a mountain of snow. But Terry wasn’t getting away so easily. He lay there, dead and frozen during the holy night—of all the goddamned nights. Gone, the snort for the cowboy. Gone, the love for the child. I still see his head, huge and tired, lying on the pond, blood from his nose pooled and refrozen, proud lips finally relaxed to show a mouthful of cracked teeth.

I lost a lot of loves. One was never my ex-husband. People often think they can’t love like when they were small. I think that’s silly. I think people are just afraid they can’t be loved like when they were small. And that is probably true. As for me, I was a lucky child.

::

Traci Sackett lives and writes in her native home of southern Colorado.

On Monday night I stepped out of my door in Leytonstone to go to the butchers. The air was alive with a chorus of sirens in broad daylight. It wasn’t even seven o’clock and all the shops were closing. My sleepy suburb is surround on all sides: East Ham, Ilford, Hackney and Walthemstow all erupted into this weird wave of looting and violence. We sat in our kitchen all night drinking whiskey and listening to traffic updates on the radio. Darkness fell and the madness spread. In the back garden you could smell burning in the air.

This financial institution's window was broken in the London Riots.

Saturday’s incendiary incident reminds me of the shooting of Jean Charles about six years ago. After the London bombings, police were so on edge that they chased a random Brazilian man and killed him in Stockwell tube station. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sean Duggan, on the other hand, was carrying a gun. We’ve yet to find out if he drew it. We now know he didn’t shoot it but this kind of situation is unusual enough in the UK to be seen as an execution. The explanation, I believe, lies in an atmosphere similar to that seen in the wake of the 7/7 bombings. In police’s eyes, it probably feels like the sky is falling in in certain parts of the country. This time, however, the terror emanates from poor urban boroughs.

There are economic explanations: A generation raised on imploding debt is now faced with cuts and austerity that do not seem to be timed for recovery. The gap between the rich and the poor is wide and getting wider and the dense nature of London means that prices don’t fall. The poor just get pushed out. I’m starting on a well paid job in a month and rents in the centre are outrageous. A third of my salary after tax will barely get me an apartment in a local authority building.

But there are less abstract reasons. Since moving to London, I have been relatively impressed by the fact that it’s an easy going place. Multiculturalism essentially leaves people to their own devices. But this bleeds into a public education system that no longer seems to care.

The result is that young people are not buying into the social system, yet they complain that it fails to pay out. It is a brutal calculation realised in gangs of feral thugs looting plasma screen TVs. They have no fear because they have nothing to loose.

Yesterday was the first day in 11 months of being here that I felt unsafe in this city.

::

Nick Craig is an environmental economist from the Green Isle, who now lives in London. He writes for High Contrast Review from time to time.

 by Samara Alpern

Bubbles are both fun and round. Any questions?

Let’s start with this fact:  Round things are fun.  Compare peas, for example, with broccoli.  Other fun foods: m&m’s, Isreali cous cous, and papaya seeds.  Well, I guess you don’t actually eat papaya seeds, but they look like rabbit poops, and that makes them hilarious.

Who doesn’t have fond memories of an older sister standing on your head in a netted playpen full of large primary-color pellets while your parents ignore your anguished shrieks and drink beer by the pitcher?  No?  Well, I feel sorry for you then.  But those of us who are blessed with those memories have to nod our heads in agreement and say, yes, those ball pits are sound evidence that round things are fun (…Wait – maybe it was me standing on my sister’s head?  Yes, that would make more sense…Fun!).

How about when you saw a bean bag chair ripped open for the first time?  Don’t lie and say it was anything less than a delight.

Snow balls.  Gumballs.  Baseballs.  Giving someone blue balls.  Good times!  Breasts are round, and they are fun.  Balls we’ve already mentioned, but some people even think they are fun without turning them blue.  And  to those people who think breasts are the most fun, and to those who think balls are the most fun:  You’re both right!  Round things are fun.

Anyway, this not even remotely comprehensive list of evidence is to remind you:  There is a curvature to happiness.

So, how can this be applied?  I’m not sure.  But the shape of happiness is a fact we just proved.

CONDUCTED ABOARD THE M/V KENNICOTT IN THE GULF OF ALASKA

James, a former pro BMX rider from small-town Minnesota, is riding his Surly Long Haul Trucker around Alaska to raise money for cancer research. That’s like three thousand miles, in case you were wondering.  He hopes to raise ten thousand dollars though donations.  He pays his own expenses and every penny donated goes to the Randy Shaver Cancer Research and Community Fund.

James with his whip, disembarking in Whittier, Alaska.

High Contrast Review:  Are brown brears and grizzlies the same?

James Rienstra:  I thought so, ’till Sam made a bet, earlier on. Boom! It’s short, it’s short and . . . it turns to the left. Grizzlies are more famished, brown bears eat more salmon. Nice. Ha ha ha ha.

James stares out to sea and thinks about how bad cancer is.

HCR:  What’s the best thing that could come of your plight?

JR:  Show people what one person can do to make a difference.

HCR:  Wait what is your mission exactly again?

JR:  To raise ten thousand dollars for cancer research, dipshit.

HCR:  How many times have you gotten laid while raising money for cancer?

JR: Once. In Bismarck. Smoking redhead. End of story.

HCR:  What do you want people to remember about this whole deal?

JR:  (Sips Jim Beam from plastic bottle) Repeat the question. (The question is repeated) Got to fuckin’ think… (James takes a picture of interviewer) To kick ass in what you want in life!!!

James Rienstra, ready to battle cancer.

HCR: If you had the ten grand to do the research yourself, what would you research?

JR: Pancreatic cancer. It’s the hardest cancer out there to survive with the lowest survival rate.

Random dude next to James:  Super cool lady I know, badass kayaker, manager of liquor store, she gets a phone call that she had stage four cancer in her pancreas and liver, quit her job and hour later and is back in Michigan now… Cricket is her name.

JR: FUCK CANCER!!!

::

In addition to being a humanitarian, James is also a pretty soulful writer.  Check out his trip notes & photographs, and make a donation at PedalingForPennies.info.

by Sarah Kulla

When we arrived to the desert, Black Star was waiting for us.

The way I see it, there are two options:

He is either a poor desert dog, running with an old limp, chasing rabbits and baking his old body in dust day after day.

Or, he is a brujo and he came to protect us–

What do you think???

Either way, we were well recieved. I love you, Black Star.

::

Sarah Kulla is a traveler, teacher, and yogi who lives in Mexico and Montana.  She is also the poetry editor of this magazine.

La Mama-Loped from Titi Yu on Vimeo.

(Have you read Part 1 and Part 2 already?)

Photo: DE

By the time I get to the schoolhouse, I can make out Vlad’s voice as he guides the rest of the group through the destruction. There are several floors to explore and I tread carefully over the rubble and smashed up remnants of furniture in order to rejoin the party. From there we move on to a swimming pool, which I had already seen in a couple of pictures online. The paint peeling off the walls. The giant clock near the shallow end of the pool. The moss and small weeds growing through cracks in the tiles. I wonder how long it will be before these buildings fall to pieces. Vlad refers to Pripyat as a paradise for photographs as he puffs on his cigarette. Indeed, everybody has a camera with them and it seems difficult to imagine some of the objects that we find laying around not to have been positioned strategically for photographs. Random gasmasks, children’s books and part of a broken globe lay distributed on a selection of surfaces, making for excellent photo opportunities.

Photo: DE

It is as though we are walking through a living museum, an encapsulated 3 dimensional archive of abandoned property and paraphernalia intertwined in a pulverised panoply of Soviet architecture. The fact that this area was occupied for less time than it has been abandoned, takes the whole experience to a new and fascinating plateaux of exploration. With birds, bears and other wild beasts being able to sustain the cycle of nature otherwise retarded in parts of the world that have become increasingly populated by humans, this concrete desert, this mangled detritus makes for a brand new insight as to what the world might look like if we human beings decided to pick up and leave.

We exit the school and traipse through several crèches, cloakrooms and classrooms, negotiating pitch-black corridors and dilapidated doorframes before reaching one of the most frequently documented areas of the city. The abandoned fairground in the centre of Pripyat hosts little else other than a small dodgem car area and the famous ferris wheel. The bright yellow paint of the compartments sparkles in the sunlight below the smashed wooden decking at the very base of ride.

The second swimming pool we visit is a lot bigger than the first, it is located in a larger complex that was also fitted with a basketball court. The walls are tarnished with a soil coloured cement and the hoops are missing from the backboards. I decide to split from the group once again and climb several flights of stairs where I find another box of gasmasks and a small series of rooms intertwined with cubbyholes. The damp air is ripe with asbestos, making it difficult to breath as I stagger about taking pictures. Vlad bellows from the ground floor that we have only a few minutes left and I work my way back down the skeleton stairwell, catching Johan’s eye for the first time since alighting the bus. There is little left to do but follow the group to yet another building that is filled with photographic delights, including a run down theatre and a dismantled gallery filled with painted portraits of great Soviet leaders.

Photo: DE

The tour promised a complementary lunch at Cafeteria Number 19, which I am thoroughly looking forward to. What I didn’t realise is that the dining hall is located opposite the power plant, but for some reason this does not bother me. Johan and I begin to discuss what we had just seen. As the coach passes by Reactor Number 4 and approaches the dining hall we have the inevitable discussion as to the feasibility of nuclear power and whether or not this is the way that was should proceed. Nuclear energy is the only way we can go, isn’t it? I suppose that depends who you ask, sure I have read Lovelock and appreciate what the man has to say, but whether one can come to a conclusion based on his argument, I am not sure. I do however recall that Lovelock predicts that most of Europe will be Sub-Saharan by 2040 and that natural resources will remain so very low that we will have to rely on nuclear power to support a specific ecosystem that grants living conditions in very small corners of the world.

Photo: DE

Our conversation continues after we are served dishes of chicken, cabbage and potatoes. The dinner ladies are most jolly in serving extra coffee and pastries as Johan and I move from the subject of nuclear energy to the nicotine infused pouches he places under his lip instead of smoking cigarettes. He offers me one and I suck at it awkwardly while trying to drink my coffee. Our conversation is interrupted by the man in charge of the trip who tells me his chip and pin reader now has a signal, I pay the $150. After stepping foot outside of the cafeteria, it is almost as though I had forgotten where I was. The coach brings the group to a statue depicting a large stone hand, the fingers pointing heavenwards, with a power plant emerging from the palm. Reactor Number 4 and the sarcophagus that supports it stand a couple of hundred meters in front of us. The Geiger counters go berserk.

::

Daniel Emmerson is currently finishing his master thesis, ‘On the Depoliticisation of Confucianism in Chinese Politics’ and is about to start his fifth summer managing the film and photography academy at Millfield in England. He is a regular contributor to High Contrast Review both online and in print. For more of his work, investigate www.danielemmerson.com.