Here, some photos I could have taken:
At night in a part of Brooklyn that felt so empty, blocks from my subway stop, I stopped at the entrance of a rock climbing place. There was only one light on, in the other room. A bright light coming in from a standard sized doorway, not nearly enough light to illuminate the high ceilinged main room. And in front of the door, a mop bucket, its elongated shadow pointing away. The light let each grip on the rock wall cast its own levels of darkness. The wall contours in sharp relief, I stood staring at the climbing wall like it was some kind of hulking monolith until someone walking on the other side of the street coughed and prompted me to move along.
Through the fogged storefront window of a bakery, with a faded white and red sign, I watched the fuzzy backlight silhouettes of people, as they melded into one another.
On a gray day while the sun's about to go down, through a dirty bus window, right after the flash of a passing yellow school bus, I caught sight of the green wood of a new telephone pole. Adorned with "forget me not" blue, fake, floral garland and photographs of the dead.
Outside of Wing Wan Kosher Chinese Restaurant, along the back, a wooden slatted fence divides the parking lot from some suburban backyard. With occasional wooden slats missing, and lightly faded, someone has painted two segments from one of those scalloped American flag banners, not quite centered along the line of the fence.
Through the fogged storefront window of a bakery, with a faded white and red sign, I watched the fuzzy backlight silhouettes of people, as they melded into one another.
On a gray day while the sun's about to go down, through a dirty bus window, right after the flash of a passing yellow school bus, I caught sight of the green wood of a new telephone pole. Adorned with "forget me not" blue, fake, floral garland and photographs of the dead.
Through someone's tinted passenger seat window, decorative colored feathers hang, like a child's art project, from the rear view mirror. It is winter and the heat from the vents lightly blow them upwards.
Down the block from my house, in a strip of stores that never quite make it, but have yet to all go out of business, there's a tiny Asian tailor shop. During the day, sometimes, when I pass by, I see the husband and wife who own the tiny shop sitting in the only two chairs, eating soup out of blue bowls and watching soap operas on TV. But at night, the shop is closed and they leave the one light on the left on. It acts as a spotlight for a display of strange knick knack objects and weird toys, on the one table in the tiny shop. The kind of "still life" that reads more like an altarpiece, a shrine to the junk gods. And the way its lit from above always leaves me with some sort of feeling of religious reverence.
Down the block from my house, in a strip of stores that never quite make it, but have yet to all go out of business, there's a tiny Asian tailor shop. During the day, sometimes, when I pass by, I see the husband and wife who own the tiny shop sitting in the only two chairs, eating soup out of blue bowls and watching soap operas on TV. But at night, the shop is closed and they leave the one light on the left on. It acts as a spotlight for a display of strange knick knack objects and weird toys, on the one table in the tiny shop. The kind of "still life" that reads more like an altarpiece, a shrine to the junk gods. And the way its lit from above always leaves me with some sort of feeling of religious reverence.
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