Florality

above ground + underground

Aliceblue has been photographing the Magnolias of Newtown. Go and check out her beautiful images here.
And it reminded me that there is a particularly spectacular Magnolia in my old 'hood that I used to walk and drive past every day for years, always meaning to photograph and never getting around to it. So when I walked underneath it last weekend on a beautiful Saturday morning, I finally took some photos.

I taught and marked most of today and so it was with a feeling of having had ones brain sucked out through a straw, spat into the gutter and run over by a truck, that I entered the subway under Broadway.

There are some fine lightbox installations down there by Merilyn Fairskye
I felt the pink one had some resonance in particular with the magnolia blossoms and as I was leaning up against it trying to block out the reflected advertising signs, a busker tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I'd like him to move out of the way so I could get a long shot. I felt bad about taking up his 'turf' in that premium busking space and declined his thoughtful offer. Then I noticed he'd gradually moved over to the opposite wall, all the while playing his violin beautifully. (To all my fellow closet-hippy readers out there: yeah, it reminds me of that Joni Mitchell song For Free too).

Minutes later Mr.'Spotless-Clean' came along with his dustpan and brush,wanting to see my photos on the playback screen and engaging me in a long passionate discourse on the faces that appear and vanish almost imperceptibly in the boxes. If the violinist hadn't already pointed one such spooky apparition to me I would've thought maybe it was a bit like seeing the Virgin Mary in a cornchip, that perhaps he'd gone a bit soft in the head on account of being so sun-deprived down there for so long.

But no, they're there. A nice ephemeral touch.

The whole thing can't have lasted longer than 5 minutes, and it was such a rare, joyful, island-like moment of connecting with a couple of gentle folk who noticed things - in this case total strangers - while streams of humanity hooked into mobiles and mp3s surged around us.

And so I went from battered to elevated. The class I'd just been teaching dealt with designing in four dimesions and the notion of ephemerality, so it seemed especially apt.

On the train home I watched a woman get out a bottle of nail varnish, balance it and paint her nails. On a violently lurching train. Now, that's confidence.


Time for some thankyous:

To everyone who commented on Bainbridge. Thank mintyfresh for coming up with the pattern.
To Melissa (and this one is very overdue) who deserves some kind of prize for having the last surviving copy, possibly in the world, of the pattern for these! ( I know a certain someone who is going to be pretty damn stoked with that). Thanks Melissa!
And to kgirl for her generous offer of a knit/elastic tutorial (lemme tell ya, sorely needed).

Never let it be said the knitblogosphere does not come through with the goods.