After photographing thousands of gloves over several years, I can’t recall ever seeing a removed glove finger all alone. Yesterday I saw the one on the left one block away from my house. The one on the right I saw yoday about twenty five blocks away.
Please make up a meaning.
Where and how I fit in has been in a swirl lately. I’ve had plenty to think about, too much to think about.
Normally I look for signs to provoke new thought and to think differently. The most striking things I see now are those that stop thought. A light pole on a freeway bridge next to a bus stop has a twisted, half-painted ground wire. It’s home enough for a cluster of moss. It’s home enough to say ’shhhhh’.
I was wandering around, waiting for the phone to ring when I found a great place to talk. As soon as I saw the bench, I saw the coyote. It walked by the bench and then into cover and turned to look at me. I was able to get the camera out before it left.
The space others leave behind by others can welcome us in ways solitude can’t. Knowing that the coyote had been there seconds before made the phone ring clearer and my greeting stronger.
I’m normally pretty good at making up some sort of symbolic meaning for the junk I find. I’m coming up with nothing solid for this.
It’s a Stanley planer, made in England. I’d guess it’s about 50 years old. Though the blade seems relatively new and sharp the rest is rusty. It appears that the front handle fell off a long time ago.
I’ll take any suggestion. All I’m imagining is “making things flat” and that is uninspiring.
I gained some resolve recently. I’m not sure how, but it feels good. At the moment it hit I was between appointments, rushing between pleasures, a little lost and late.
I saw this toy sword on the cramped landscaping of some business or another (a car lot, I think). The blade in the sun and the handle in the shade. Which to choose.
I didn’t get a picture to capture this morning’s divination moment, but it will stay in my head. A puzzle piece is always appropriate. I’ve been finding a lot of them lately, as well as playing cards. So this post won’t go pictureless.
On the way out this morning, I heard a loud burp, really loud. When I looked up a man across the street, who I suspect made the noise, just stepped in something, turned his foot to see what he stepped in and stumbled.
I helped myself a lot today by staying quiet, even though the indigestion is very, very uncomfortable.
On my walk today, I was thinking about how much my life will require more confidence and creativity now, more than in the recent past at least. I was thinking about how limits on my time, increased procedural and resource burdens and my own confusion are weighing down on me more just as my discipline and drive to express myself increase.
Then I saw this rock on some kid’s drawing. It was raining. It was easy as pulling it out from under the rock. I hope.
I remember doing an experiment in college that demonstrated that light behaved as if it were composed of particles. Then we demonstrated that, no, it’s actually composed of waves without a medium. Of course, it’s not that simply confusing. Nonetheless, it was a great provocative experience.
When I see something that appears as a symbol of something, a face in the pattern on the ceiling, a cloud shaped like a ship, a glove waving hello from the gutter, I consider it to be what it symbolizes and that completely, at least for a moment. As far as I can tell, I find what I am looking for by imagining what I am looking at.
I actually spend relatively little time looking down when I walk, even though most of my photographs are taken of low things. Those things on the ground experience a filtering process. They are dropped or discarded. They get broken and crushed. If they are valuable, they get picked up. What remains is free of purpose and meaning. I can give to each thing a meaning free from personal utility or value.
I need to spend more time looking down into myself.
