olives

I haven't quite mastered the photo editing tool for this blog, but stay tuned. Mastery draws nigh. Where these words will eventually fall in relation to the two jpgs I dropped into the field earlier today I know not. I shall now perform a test, by way of the "PUBLISH POST" button.

Aha. I now have a clear visual roadmap of how things will sort themselves out. A comfort. One thing that annoys me is the inability here to indent new paragraphs. When I make a full paragraph, for example, with the last sentence flushed to the right margin, the reader will never know that a new paragraph has begun. Instead the read page becomes a dense, heavy brick of words, making it more tedious to read due to the absence of visual pauses. So there's that. Now for some coffee.

I've posted two pictures today. The left hand image is of a view from my seat on the Muni bus looking through the front window early on my morning commute downtown. I love riding buses here in San Francisco, and for that matter in other parts of the world, too. Public transportation fascinates and entertains me. There is so much aesthetic material to be found on the bus. These are some of the most democratic of public spaces most anywhere in the world. Here, in Manhattan, in Stockholm or London, even in Japan, although there it's a bit more homogeneous, visually at least. I enjoy looking at people, strangers, the masses, the other, call it what you like, use your own semantic marker. Strangers fascinate me. When some visual phenomena catches my eye, I become a child: I want to just stare forever. Of course I don't. As a grownup, I've become both more self aware and also aware of the self awareness of others. Indeed, social convention leans on my psyche, almost commanding me to modify my behavior and follow the rules. Don't stare. If an individual notices you staring, quickly avert your glance. Look over their head or below their chin, look through the window at passing objects.

A little girl took a seat across from me this afternoon. Her mother sat down next to me. She was dressed in varying shades of pink- a hooded pink jacket, a pink dress with flowers, pink stocking with balloons or hearts printed on them, pink shoes. I guessed her age to be about seven or eight, but her face belied a very different story. She wore the face of a much older woman, someone in their thirties, but without lines and shrunken to the size of a little girl's. Her mother's face to me was rounder, chubbier, more girlish. Her daughter wore her mother's mother's face. She was aging in reverse. It struck me immediately as peculiar and extraordinary. I couldn't decide whether it was for her a blessing or a curse. I don't think it really mattered to her, to be perfectly honest, but I did see that her's was a somber, emotionless, almost unhappy expression.

Then I watched as she moved her hand slowly to her inside pocket and slowly, self consciously pull out a small square wrapped package of what appeared to be a post-it pad. Her long fingers slowly, deliberately unwrapped the package. She looked up and at her mom and reached out to give the wrapping to her mother. She then turned back to the small pad of paper and very methodically pulled off a single tab of colored paper. The way she moved through these actions held my attention. She was so meticulous with her hand movements, as though she held in her hand something fragile and delicate, like a crystal snowflake or a baby panda or kangaroo sleeping. I don't know how to explain the thing. I can only describe what I saw. I might try and speculate about this little pink hooded girl who seemed to be wearing the face of a much older woman to avoid being recognized-an adult hiding in a girl's body. Her vibe was of a much older and sadder, almost world weary soul. Her movements followed the pacing of a grandmother. She could be an actor when she grows up, I thought. Camera operators love slow, deliberate movements. What else does it call to mind? I know. A sloth in the Amazon, that slow moving creature up in the forest canopy, very slowly traveling from branch to branch, tree to tree, as though sleep climbing. Is that right? A sloth? A hairy beast whom someone can wake from the trance with a finger snap or clap of the hand.