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 listening to Memo From Turner downtown. In between verses a 60s woman walked past and began speaking. I turned to see her among seven or eight bike staples, asking “Is this where I tie up my horse?” Then turning her head upward to ask the clouds threatening rain “IS THIS WHERE I TIE UP MY HORSE?”
(No photo, so here’s a traffic cone.)
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 went to Wordcamp Portland yesterday. Though I couldn’t stay for the whole event, and I’m far from a wordpress power user, it was still quite inspirational. I met good, positive people and saw some shining examples of people doing what they loved with good tools.
Though I learned something immediately useful, and somethings that helped me rethink my weak approach to blogging, it could have been a day long conference on fly-tying, or quilting, or chain-saw sculpture. In my current situation, I just need to know that things can work.
I had a very well-needed walk full of objects to contemplate. Many had immediate, sometimes laughably obvious, relevance to the matters on my mind. All of them had aspects that provoked rewarding contemplation.
First off I found this level. I’m getting further and further off balance, allowing myself to be shoved off balance too easily. Though this picture may not show it, this level is covered with either mortar, or very pale mud. Some of the bubbles are completely obscured. As I walked on, I thought about which level (in both the true-to-horizontal sense and the higher-or-lower sense) I might be not seeing, which bubble balance I need to clean.
I also found a fork. Though not actually in the road, it did make me think of points of decision and their influence on direction. I crossed the street on whim and immediately found a shard of security glass shaped like a heart. When the phrase “heart of glass” is used it is meant to indicate a vulnerability, but this was a heart shaped by the fragility of the glass around it and the accidents it met.
While still thinking about what remains after the accidents that might befall me, and the shape it’s left me in, I saw what looked to be a silver-plated spoon with a very ornate handle. The bowl of the spoon had black burn marks left from somebody’s fix. The addictions of wealth, the abuse of the beautiful, the lost way, all of these things kept my mind busy until I saw a very beautiful red door that had been nailed shut.
The one thing I didn’t get around to contemplating enough, and I still haven’t forced a meaning upon it, is a piece of bread I found with the center torn out, resting at the edge of an intersection downtown. I’m still working on this one. Let me know if you have any ideas.
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.
A great deal is changing in my life. Each moment is one okay-have-I-got-everything Moving Day among the not-yet-packed priorities and principles. At least, I’d like to say “moment”, but I’m still clinging to everything but the moment lately. “Now” hasn’t been figuring into it much.
Only after a half an hour looking at trash and clouds do I finally let it all go. Triage involves being able to identify what arrives dead, and what offers hope with good work. This is the way I need to walk forward.