Yarg Nairod

Self-portrait. Bomal-sur-Ourthe, Belgium, circa 1982.

Yarg Nairod

My image in this mirror hasn’t moved an inch. I am intact. The picture of Dorian Gray, that’s me opposite, in flesh and wrinkles, showing my years. The guy looking at me in the mirror, me when I was twenty. Intensely and without compassion, he considers the fifty-three year old man. As if saying, “Watch it. This photo, I’m taking it for you, for later. So that you never forget that look in your eyes. So that you don’t betray it, so there’s no letting time and life corrupt you. Stay sharp-eyed, attentive, hungry. There’s no renouncing anything. Don’t betray yourself.”