Categories
interpretation personal streetfinds

Paperclip

(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.

Categories
divination interpretation streetfinds

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

Some cards serve only to show the name of the game.

Categories
interpretation personal

To Small Things A Short Reach

I’ve been overly anxious about many things for about a week. My life has growing concerns. This morning my walk was nearly ruined by heavily-rutted thinking about things about which I could do nothing.

Once I saw the tweezers, all the problems seemed like slivers. Of concern, but so small and barely dangerous and, most of all, better dealt with by finer thinking.

Categories
creativity interpretation

The Center of The Fountain

When I was studying quantum physics, I remember hearing that there was a way of seeing the world as a web of incommensurable wavelengths and that all material is composed of the unique co-incidences of these wavelength. Each thing was composed of infinite waves coming together once in one place.

I can’t recall any reason to believe that this was true, or a particularly useful model for the problems at hand (as well as I could understand them). What I remember most was just imagining that it was true and meaningful. It’s still useful for that purpose.

So many otherwise unrelated things influence each little thing in life. Each incident is confluence. To act with intent is to understand that these strands of influence can’t be unraveled or even traced. To appreciate beauty is to embrace this shortcoming.

Categories
creativity interpretation

Accidental Iron Will

I’ve annoyed people by repeating the statement ‘You’ve got to destroy in order to create.’ The number is probably higher than the number who have annoyed me with it. It’s not just that it’s a platitude, but one that seems to excuse way too much. Probably most importantly, in most cases of creation those things that are left behind after destruction, and left behind by the grand, justifying creation, carry with them the greatest invitation.

A bridge is destroyed in being replaced. The tangle of remaining rebar waits to be shipped off to be further destroyed, reshaped and reused for other productions utterly unintended and possibly yet unimagined.

Categories
divination interpretation

As Far As I Can Tell

Symbols Unknown To Me 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.

Categories
interpretation streetfinds

Jumbled Invitation

All WordsWhen letters are arranged in words, I read them. When I can’t find words, I’m invited to assemble my own.

Categories
interpretation streetfinds

Drop To

Hand Off 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.

Categories
divination interpretation streetfinds

Low Light

No Low Light 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.

Categories
interpretation streetfinds

The Hidden Hearts

The Inspiration of Rain During a particularly grim commute, I looked up in the rain and saw cardboard hearts dangling from a telephone pole. I counted four.

The Drying AirThis 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.