Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
The category, Heart, is for posts that make us feel.
When the quarry was first excavated, it exposed a local geological record going back 130,000 years, right down to a bedrock of shale that, itself, is probably half a billion years old. Near the bottom, at the 130,000 year mark, the geologist, Arthur Philemon Coleman, discovered the tooth of a giant beaver.
The scene paralyses me. My mind reels at the enormity of the contrasts. I feel called to respond but don’t know how. I make my shot and walk away, head bowed because I know it’s a great shot, but so what?
As buildings approach this ultimate dissolution, they undergo a shift from human time to geologic time, no longer measuring the transformation in human heartbeats, but in the barely discernible rhythm of tectonic rumbles.
He bangs his mallet on his guitar, the lid from a plastic bin, and then his head, all in quick succession, like he’s a drummer in a band. I step up and shoot a quick burst. How can I not?
People in Toronto are fortunate because the city has grown up over a network of ravines that provide easy escape from the usual urban traumas of concrete and vertigo.
This is the first time in months that I’ve been out with my camera and have interacted with a live human being. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath all winter and can suddenly let it out (while still wearing a mask, of course). It gave me such a lift to chat with a stranger.
The thing is: this worry is not something that happens in my head. Whatever happens in my head is only a symptom of something more pervasive that overwhelms my body. I feel it in my shoulders. By the end of a day, it feels as if I’m carrying a massive weight that bows me down.
Before there were germs, there was miasma. Bad air. Billows rolling off the bogs and fens. The stench of swamp gas. The rot of ferns and trees fallen to decay in stagnant pools. Fetid. Rancid. Odoriferous.
My wife and I live in antiseptic circumstances. High above the city streets, shuttered in our condo, it’s easy for us to self-isolate. Covid-19 is not the only thing we keep at bay. We’re high enough that we don’t get bugs either.
More people live in my hometown than lived on the entire planet when humans first organized themselves into large communities. Yet that was all it took to produce most of the diseases that have afflicted us even to the present day.
Oddly enough, successful street photography is a bit like catching a virus. I say this because, as with catching a virus, street photography requires a lot of exposure. Not camera sensor exposure, but exposure to people interacting in public places.
After lunch, I ran across the road to get a few things for supper and as I stepped through the entrance to the mall, I noticed an older man lying on the floor stretched out on his side. In particular, I noted his blue mask which gave an odd splash of colour to an otherwise…
If the colour yellow was an animal, it would be a cat. It simply is and doesn’t care what you think. It bursts in upon your world whether you like it or not.
cellular breakdown draws our thoughts to death, but seen afresh, it reveals an act of generosity
Too long; didn’t read. Like LOL when Facebook became a thing, TL;DR is a viral acronym that has taken on a sudden relevance. Once an occasional rat scampering from a sinking mass of text, now the TLDR rodent is everywhere. Typically, it’s offered as a complaint about the length of a text, but its resurgence…