Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ready to roll...

Though I'm not a regular commuter, I've been spending a fair amount of time on ferries lately. I've usually got my camera with me, and it seems to be craving simplicity and super-saturated colors lately, so I just sort of follow it around and allow it to collect what it needs.

I know; that sounds a little goofy, as if my camera has a mind of its own completely apart from me, rather like the characters that take on a life of their own when an author writes a book. It's not strictly true, of course -- the camera and the characters are always expressing something of the author or photographer's own nature -- but it does sometimes seem that by separating ourselves slightly from the creative process we enhance the energy flow.

For some reason I have this image of a hose with a few kinks in it -- the nozzle needs to be farther from the source so the hose can be straightened out and opened up. Hmm -- there are a lot of places I could take that image, but I suspect that's a topic for another post. Right now I want to think about these ferry blocks, which were calling to me this morning. And I think what that's about is that they were created on purpose -- with these handy tabs to make them easy to move -- to keep cars from rolling off the ferry when it's on the move.

But we don't actually spend our lives on the ferry. The ferry is just a means of transport from one shore to another, which means that when you reach your destination the block needs to be removed from under your wheels in order to disembark. I'm trying to explore what significance that might have for those rocky transition periods in our lives, when we are not doing the driving; when someone else is piloting the boat and we're expected to turn off our own engines and wait.

I do know that there have been times -- when we're getting really close to shore, and it's time to get back in the car and prepare to drive again -- when I've been driving an old car with a weak battery and I've been concerned I wouldn't be able to start it up again. But that's not so much of a problem these days; now it's more that I'm itching to get where I'm going -- wherever that may be -- and I return to the car and wait impatiently for the ferry personnel to remove the block so I can move forward.

So maybe that's where I am now: I'm in some sort of transition, and I've had to give up driving privileges for a bit; someone else has been in control for a while now. And there are blocks that have been keeping me on the transition boat, but I'm kinda thinking this ride has gone on long enough now; I'm ready to disembark. But the fact is, we're not quite ready to land yet, the blocks are still there, and it's for my own safety; I just have to trust they'll be removed when it's my turn to be in control again.

1 comment:

Virginia Wieringa said...

Good thoughts! All that from just a couple red triangles!