Some days I go out looking specifically for something... and don’t find it.  On other days I just go out and let whatever is waiting out there find me and show itself.  Today was one of those days.    It’s not as if the world starts popping like corn in a hot skillet, but the world definitely isn’t passive either. Sometimes, like today, when the images are especially good and I’ve got only my cell phone, I feel a tinge of regret that I didn’t bring along the bigger camera.  It’s cumbersome when I’m riding, so if I don’t have an image in mind to try to find, I leave it at home.  Today from the moment I saw the passion flower, I had a feeling the cell phone camera was exactly what I wanted to use... no regrets.  

Maybe it’s that my eyes and my brain are sometimes seeing and responding differently from other days.  After the passion flower I rode along a street in North Park where someone had spilled black paint on an almost white wall... not a lot of it, but it was probably deliberately thrown so it would run down and splatter on the sidewalk. On other days when I’ve seen the spilled paint, it didn’t really get my attention.  Today was different.  There was a story in that spilled paint, and I didn’t need to know the details of the story to make the image meaningful. I’m only guessing because I’ve not been formally trained in art or art history,  but I think abstract art is often like that.  When someone exclaims over a Jackson Pollock, “But what does it mean?  What is it,” I want to say, “That’s not the point.” I’m not at all sure Pollock would agree with me.  Perhaps he always knew for certain what every painting of his means and just didn’t care if I see it the way he experienced it. If I could have a conversation with Mr. Pollock I’d tell him I don’t care whether or not he cares that I don’t care. It’s a personal matter. Now... I realize that’s a dodge which someone educated and wise in matters of abstract expressionist art might not appreciate; but I don’t really care about that either.  What I care most about is seeing... really seeing what’s out there. 

Almost always when I’m riding along on the bike, I’m looking downward most of the time and I see things I’ve seen before, but they present themselves differently... like the manhole cover today on Hotel Circle South where I stopped to take pictures of the jimson weed. We had a little rain early this morning and that jimson weed was really alive today.  Georgia O’Keeffe would know what I mean.

...and sometimes I accidentally take a picture with the cell phone in my pocket, and occasionally that image is an abstraction worth keeping.  Photography  is "drawing with light," and that's exactly what the camera starts doing in my pocket or wherever it is when I hit the little button.