Shadows

Sylvia Plath put it this way: "I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow." Now, I don't follow all of her meaning, but I think it is a beautiful sentence.

A couple of weeks ago, cycling on the 142nd St. bridge over the Mackenzie Ravine, I looked down to my right, and, there, down, down there,  rippling over the August leaves below, was my projected image. It was a split-second of thrill.

A couple of days ago, that unexamined thrill returned virtually from Mars, where Curiosity has made its presence felt. The unmanned NASA rover has been sending back images of the red planet, shots of the buttes and mesas, Gale crater, the rocks and dust scattered by its landing, Mount Sharp in the distance. It's all fascinating. But what's memorably quirky is the shadow of Curiosity that is captured in some of the pics.

It's like a photographer who doesn't quite get it right. Doesn't quite get himself out of the shot.

This morning, back here on Earth, Shelagh and I were cycling back with breakfast from Meadowlark Safeway. In the panniers were eggs, yogurt, blueberries, a pineapple. The image of the spiky pineapple leaves poking out of Shelagh's saddlebag captured me before I captured it.

Maybe that's what a photograph is? In a word, autobiophotography. But that's not the item.

The item is that a shadow is somehow a proof that between the unblinking gaze of the sun and the canvas of earth and trees and asphalt below, in between that projector and those screens, is us.

We still get in the way.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughed ab
Read more

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve
Read more

On the way to and from Coffee Outside

Image
I have wondered about the the flight to artifice when natural beauty is encountered. Standing in front of a mountain vista, I will routinely offer some version of, wow, it looks like a painting! Or like a postcard. Or that is just out of a movie! This morning as I pedalled in the MacKinnon Ravine the April snow felt etched onto the limbs of the trees. I have often felt dissatisfied with this transposing of the beauty out there into the key of human making.  But, maybe, painting and photography and engraving and the rest of the human arts are as natural to us, as lovely, as nature itself. Or, maybe, so entwined that it is hard to tell nature and art apart. My bicycle has certainly transported me to feelings of freedom I would not have achieved were it not a piece of technology.  Who are we, really?                                                                           At the turn at the bottom of the ravine, a plastic orange fence encircles a soggy sink
Read more