An online commonplace book
The Wright Bros were geniuses.
Flying is a miracle!
875,000 pounds careening through the air.
Dallas to Orlando in two hours.
Free Biscoff cookies and Sprite.
A miracle!
But flying still gives me the anxieties.
The recipe for peace?
Works every time.
The Magic Kingdom is a city all it’s own.
Bridges rise and fall. Smooth, paved, concrete roads twist through the four Disney burroughs: Fantasyland, Frontierland, Tomorrowland, and Adventure land.
It has it own barber shop. It’s own Main Street. And the Walt Disney World railroad provides it’s citizens with a well run public transportation system.
Walt don’t play either. All trains run on schedule.
As with any vibrant city though, street art is everywhere.
Hand painted signs. Tiled tapestries. Sculptures.
Walt Disney’s love of art lives well beyond the animation table.
Enemies of envy,
tighten your grip.
Hold your tongue.
Don’t let it slip.
They stare at you like haunted paintings.
Faces that are easy to miss among the parents having breakdowns. The kids having breakdowns. The sweet Mickey Mouse eared treats, and brain twisting teacups.
But there they are, waiting to be noticed. Beautiful sculptures that set the atmosphere inside the Magic Kingdom.
I had to document the mystical eyes.
I needed to photograph the creepy skulls.
I wanted to remember the joyful smiles.
Wisps of childhood,
skip through palmetto bushes.
Memories flicker.
I stepped closer. I stepped further away.
I squinted.
There’s something here. This is not your standard, rusting, industrial trash-bin.
Look closer.
Ahhh. There it is.
It’s a shoreline.
A scorched shoreline at the edge of a prehistoric desert.
As my imagination flickered and spun, I could see it closer.
I could see the foam washing up against the red stone shore.
I could see the ocean water darken as the ocean floor falls deeper.
I could even see the pelicans swooping down, nose diving for their morning catch.
A wandering imagination is the back door to new worlds.
Go ahead and open it.
Blue springs, Spanish moss
Bald fades under Yankee caps
I’m home. It’s still home.
Orion. Peaceful hunter.
Loyal friend. Leave winter
on my doorstep.
I wanted to snap a compelling picture. Bring an old football boot to life.
This picture had hope, so I showed my boo. She gave it the iphone thumbs up, but her text message that followed made me pause.
“It looks like a heart.” she said.
Suddenly, I was no longer looking at a football boot.
Instead of studs, I saw aortas. Instead of stitching I saw capillaries. Instead of fake leather I saw flesh and muscle.
This is the power of sharing your work. The person you share it with, can let you see through their eyes.
We all have that ideal person we want to be.
That imaginary, idealized person who drifts into our daydreams during a Wednesday afternoon budget meeting.
This imaginary-self is usually a mix of various people you admire. And everyone’s imaginary- self is different.
Some are a cross of Conan O’ Brian, Beyoncé and Martha Stewart.
For others it’s a mix of Joe Rogan, Bill Gates and Morgan Freeman.
And for others it’s part Frank Lloyd Wright, part Tony Bennett and part Jane Austin.
But my imaginary, idealized person? My imaginary-self?
A bear.
Robert Macfarlane describes him with incredible detail in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey
There is something of the polar bear to Bjørnar: there in his powerful physique, his heftedness to the north, those white eyes, and of course in his name: Bjørnar, the Bear, from the Old Norse bjørn. He is an intense, intelligent presence; a person you would want fighting for you and would dread as an enemy. He is not without self-regard, but I do not begrudge him that.
There is also a strong mystical streak to Bjørnar: unexpected perhaps, in a man whose working life compels him daily to such pragmatism and self-reliance. But – as I will learn – Bjørnar looks often through things: hard into them and right through them with those pale eyes of his. He looks through people, through bullshit, and the through the surface of the sea.
Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, pg 292-293, Chapter: The Edge.
A heftedness to the north.
A powerful physique.
The ability to look through the surface of the sea.
Add relentless, creative, box-to-box midfielder to the list and my imaginary-self’s profile is complete.
What traits does your imaginary-self possess?
And now some:
Heft - n. chiefly N. Amer. 1 weight. 2 Ability or influence.
Origin ME: prob. from HEAVE , on the pattern of words such as cleft and weft.
Floodlights and Goalposts 