When I began reading Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences about Writing, I thought the same. It’s so graceful, so winsome, so wise; when will it crash into a tragic heap? 

When I finally won an eBay bid for my long-coveted Leica x1, when it arrived, after I finished marvelling at the packaging (what care, what consideration these people have) the first thing I did was to climb online and see if it was fake.  Search: "Leica x1 counterfeit scam." Hmm. Nothing.  But this camera is so light, surely it's a plastic knock-off of the dignified Leica of which I've dreamt.  I snapped a picture of the desk in front of me.  Hmm.  Best picture I've ever seen. Not fake then. Or at least, a very, very good fake, featuring luxury optics that outperform any camera I've ever held.  

It took me about two hours to love everything about this camera.

I haven't had a proper camera since the digital revolution made my years as film photography student seem quaint, like minoring in tannery, or taxidermy.  Granted, there is still great work being done in film, and I'm not sure that even the best digital cameras match it yet--though they're close--but it still feels a little funny having been in likely the last class to learn hand-processing not as some retro-choice, but as the only option for aspiring professionals, just as it must've felt when the French perfected a county-wide canal system just in time for the automobile to render that method of goods transport adorable and less cutting-edge than they imagined and budgeted for. 

Since I'm travelling around Europe a good bit this year, I thought it was time to step up.