flags at Missouri Botanical Garden Japanese Festival
The wind refused to blow as I snapped photo after photo of a these flags. I thought about asking HM to shimmey up the pole and blow on them, but he was kind enough to wait as I stood in the middle of the road to get any shot at all and likewise, he prevented the SUVs and muscle cars from running me down.
Trying to take good pictures always puts me in mind of the fantastic shots we see and take for granted. How often do you wonder where the photographer was in order to get the picture? Was he on a roof, hangning from a glider, pimping his own beliefs to hang with some sort of crowd in order to get their pictures, walking along the edge of something swampy or succulent, risking his or her life, or sliding through the ocean or nearly falling off a cliff or hanging in some sort of human twist to catch a glimpse on camera of some gorgeous thing growing out of the skin of a tree twenty feet above ground?
Of course thousands and thousands of photos imply no risk at all. They are the wondrous magic of timing. Of being there. Of seeing. So many blogs willingly and freely put marvelous remarkable shots out there for others to see. They are my mentor. I learn and learn, and then I go and take a dumb-ass picture anyway. But photos are so another way to communicate. You see them. You feel the stories and look more closely and get even more.
I had no intention at all of talking about photos, but I must express my delight to ALL those who post pictures. Who climb up on their desks and the backs of their couches to get shots of their desks and manuscripts, of their offices, who stand on porches, fences, hills, knee-deep in water, or in the grocery store, the streets of Paris, the waterways of Venice, the Outback of Anywhere, – all of it out there, in places we cannot get to and see without being time travelers.
Back to the topic: Fish.
I am a Pisces. This “fish” thing is important to me when it applies. Thus, the above photo of the “fish” at the Festival.
Book recommendations
But what of having read books about fish? “Course there was PINOCCHIO, with the whale, not really a fish but a mammoth mammal and a scary one when you’re a kid….and then there was MOBY DICK and I pushed the entire senior class in a Maine high school through that book, propelling them towards the apparent final battle between Ahab and Moby….and then there was THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA and you know what? I read that book far too quickly. I read it just to say I had read it. Foolish. I must go back. Not to look at the story; I know full well how that goes.
I have to go back and look at the language. You can buzz on over to Scobberlotch and hear Hemingway’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, plied with pictures of “Papa” and evocative. Especially for those who write. Have a look.
And then there was ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH when the kids were born. Not completely silly, you know. It’s the memories such books create as much as the silly rhymes which they remember as well.
Do movies figure in this aimless rambling riff? Let’s say ‘yes.’ Consdier BIG FISH. It’s a fantasy. It’s a story of a son and his father and the former trying to understand the latter. (that is a terrible simplification.) If you watch it if you haven’t already, just let it happen and avoid making sense. You’ll feel the sense of it, which, we could say, is the essence of fantasy.
Are there other books with fish in the story or the title? Oh, thousands, likely. But without coffee, this little tug has run out of steam. Wishing you a wonderful week ahead….
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