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.
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.
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’ve troubled myself a great deal recently wondering whether or not I’ve missed opportunities that could of made my financial situation better. I think about the professional ambition that I avoided thinking that it was either dishonest or too prideful, or at least something other than the love of good work.
I found this sign while fretting. No doubt it fell off of a sofa or exercise machine while someone was hauling it off the curb, but out of context it was a great find. I realized that I have worked hard to get what’s most important to me to be ready for what’s free to me now. It’s hard to remember that because it’s all around me every day. I’ve got a great wife and great children, and that wasn’t even remotely possible to me in the past.
(No pictures this time. My camera is dying and I can’t afford a new one just yet, besides, it’s just a paperclip. Imagine it.)
On my walk, I was being overly concerned about money. About a block a way, I saw something shiny in the gutter, something certainly metal. I’ve found jewelry plenty of times before and this seemed a possibility.
A paperclip holds paper together by being bent, and clinging to a bent shape. Its grip is relatively loose, and temporary. A staple holds by piercing. I will think about staples.
When letters are arranged in words, I read them. When I can’t find words, I’m invited to assemble my own.
Environmentalism is popular. Regardless of this popularity’s value as an approach to the problems of pollution and energy conservation, it creates a cultural space for valuing what we leave behind.
We don’t throw things away. We hand them off.
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.
During a particularly grim commute, I looked up in the rain and saw cardboard hearts dangling from a telephone pole. I counted four.
This morning I walked by and counted six. Looking at the first photo, I can see now that there were more than four. The others were just hidden. Looking at this later photo, I can see that there are probably more. I’ve been needing to remind myself that there are these hidden heart hanging up there.
