Leaving Balboa Park where a very green St. Patrick’s Day event included a parade of green floats and green people, I noticed more than usual the beauty of plainness in people and ordinary stuff like a wooden shovel handle and broom handles leaning again a plain wall... or maybe it was the plainness of beauty that I was seeing. The pictures I took in the park seemed to mock the people in them; so I decided to write what I had seen and get my photo du jour in more ordinary territory.
PEOPLE OBSERVED...
Balboa Park: St. Patrick’s Day Celebration

I

A young man, maybe twenty-six, no more, floats across the traffic plaza in front of the San Diego Museum of Art ignoring, if aware, the looks and sighs of appreciation of women and men alike. His head steady, chin slightly elevated not so much, I guess, in arrogance as in self assurance, he moves toward three young women of early college age or perhaps late high school. They are obviously thrilled to have his attention. He kisses two of them on the cheek, looking all the while at the pretty blond who waits her turn. They lean into each other for more than a perfunctory kiss, not full mouthed but insistent. The other two watch and perhaps a hundred other people watch.

II

A man at least as old at seventy in black flannel hood peaked above a wrinkled, bearded face like a Bruegel self-portrait, holds in one hand a rope tied to a young dog that is obviously eager to be in another place. The man and dog move slowly away through the crowd. Nobody notices.

III

The heavier-than-she-wants-to-be thirty something woman with maroon hair, ballooning bosom, and macro skirt prances through the crowd, a green band around her left thigh... to honor St. Patrick... or to make sure she is noticed. She is walking alone. People stop and stare.