This photograph is from August 23, 2025, captured at the wedding of two friends who moved to south Brooklyn from Pittsburgh around the same time that I moved to north Brooklyn from San Francisco. It’s a photograph of a yellow tractor, a red riding mower, and an orange plough parked in front of a cornfield at Bell Mountain Estates in the Pennsylvania countryside. A forested ridge rises behind a hill of trees in the distance.

It's a wonderful thing to be in a place like this. Large community gatherings are celebrations, righteous rituals of friendship between sovereign beings, bound by a specific place and a particular time. Shared laughter and quiet conversations are proof that human memories are verified only when in the company of other people.

A community isn't one declared, permanent bond. It's a hundred small ones self-actualized as a shared, social energy. When that energy inevitably dissipates, the photograph is a delicate remainder—a wondrous echo buzzing around the eyeballs and backed into the brain.