This from The Mysterious Traveller.
1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the 5th sentence.
4. Post the sentence in your blog. Ponder it for meaning, subtext, or hidden agendas….
5. Tag 5 others to do the same.
Mine reads as: "There was nearly no traffic, so the water’s reflection was calm and reflective."
My pondering causes me to cringe at how carelessly the sentence is cast. Why didn’t I catch that redundant "reflective"? At any rate, it came from a moment in Venice last January, which feels remote and deep in my past now.
I am, however, about to enter a period with a lot of traffic and little time for reflection. I leave for Chicago tomorrow to shoot two assignments, one after the other. This random peek into another time, when I was engaged in the deepest seeing I do as a photographer, is a useful reminder to stop and pay attention to where I am once in a while this coming week.
Here is the quote in context, from "Falling for Venice": "Today is the day I fell for Venice. I found myself in the Cannarregio, in quiet, residential neighborhoods. Boats were parked at the curb the way cars would have been. Most were small wooden boats; maybe one in ten was fiberglass. There was nearly no traffic, so the water’s reflection was calm and reflective. I kept stopping and saying to myself, this is so beautiful, and then I’d turn a corner and be struck dumb with an even more generous dose of beauty and proportion and grace. And then it would happen again. And again."
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