moments. glimpses. metaphors.
Lately, there have been things I've glimpsed as I walk past; moments which then remain etched in my memory for quite a while longer than the walks themselves have lasted.
Such that, upon retrieval, they seem effortlesly metaphorical about... something. Perhaps the quality of my experience in the present, perhaps about the thing that I've been studying lately (or 'cultivating,' really, if one were to be really honest about it ::chuckle::), or perhaps about life itself more broadly.
Whichever it is — or even if it's all of the above, and more — the fact that the visual encounter being so arresting as to be captured in an image, more or less permanently, gives the moment its heft as an unexpectedly powerful hinge in time and space.
There's this tech startup whose offices are on Powell near Francisco, just up the street from Goodfellas; it has large bay windows often open to the sidewalk, even at night. The image of this young developer or engineer working at his craft was an evocative one for me, for various reasons, so I captured it (after asking silent permission from any listening deities or sprites ::chuckle::):
These 2 images below are a few days apart; the one on the left a pet store in Chinatown, on Powell near Broadway -- I was walking to the Chinatown branch of the SFPL that afternoon. The image of the captive birds bringing me in mind of yesterday's dream, in which previously shackled avians did get to fly away after I freed them. Arion Press is at the Fort Mason Center, and I always like to linger by it when walking past, just to get a sense of a more mechanical era, one in which the printed word was instantiated by movable type, and not 1s and 0s.
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And last but decidedly not least, this is the San Francisco Fencing Academy, also on Powell, near Joe DiMaggio Playground. I was quite taken by the fencing master teaching his wheelchair-bound student, and it was just the 2 of them in the dojo (not sure what it's called in the fencing world) that afternoon. I lingered a bit, and when the teacher looked my way, I waved and they both sent warm smiles my way. Maybe I'll take up fencing myself? ::chuckle::
