I love this photo series, just for its narrative. I suspect that Mysterious Purple Umbrella Guy coming closer in the background totally made the move on purpose for the beauty of the picture. At the very last second, he extended his arm so the umbrella appeared right above the head of the subject. I miraculously caught it.

That’s my lil bro being portrayed. He’s 24.

He almost passed away in February but didn’t say a thing about it.

I got the news from my mum months later, in my birthday letter. “By the way, you’re the last one of the family not to know that your brother almost died in a car crash where 2 of his best friends died.”

My bro was sitting on the good side.

The same week, another girl I knew almost died in a car crash and a 29 year old girl at work came back with no hair and no breasts. That was Survivor Week.

I’ve been questioning the randomness of life and death even more since then.

I’ve always been sidereally fascinated by survivor stories. (Did you know that “sidereal” has the same etymology as “desire”?) Who survives around others who die, and why? I’ve been obsessed with the Holocaust literature since I was 7.

My brother came to visit me in London for the first time last week.

I didn’t want to let show anything about the fact that I could have never seen him again. We didn’t talk about “it” explicitly or implicitly. I took him on urban adventures instead.

Last Monday, it heavily hailed.  We wanted to go play bowling in Brick Lane but the tube never showed up so we got out of the underground and decided to get locally lost in NW10.

The sky cleared and the sun appeared after a few steps on the street. All of a sudden, there it was. The most insanely beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen: huge double full arch, sparkling fluorescent colours. It was so surreal that I was expecting to see unicorns, Judy Garland or My Little Pony gambolling on it.

That’s the happiest I felt in a long time, wandering in Unicorns Land. I was ecstatically jumping like a frog and forced my bro to take a million pictures.

I want to have kids because I think they would be the only ones able to understand my level of enthusiasm for stuff like that. Anyone above 18 is already too blasé for my standards.

I have such an untouched potential for pure joy.