Ordinary

I wasn't going to write today.  I still am not feeling well and can write only dour, dire words, but I am habituated.  I am compelled.  

Perhaps I poisoned myself in doing my lawn work.  I had my hands in some wet fertilizer that also had weed killer and, a thing I didn't think of, insecticide.  I scooped the damp pellets out of the bag with my bare hand.  Idiotic.  But last night, lying on the couch alone watching t.v., it came to me.  How stupid am I?  How dumb can I be?

A dumb fucking cowboy.  

But it may not be that at all.  I don't know how I feel yet this morning.  I took a shitload of pain relievers and antihistamines last night and am groggy as fruit fly on ether right now.  Time will tell.  

Let me just say a word or two about today's photo and leave it there.  It is a nothing photo in many ways.  My cousin and mother, for instance, would think I was goofy for liking it, as would most of the crowd at the Anti-Art Festival.  And they are probably right.  I can't imagine sitting down with most people and trying to explain why William Eggleston or Saul Leiter are important.  Sunsets and flowers and reflections in water, yes.  Indeed, if and when I do, I sound like a pretentious fuck even to myself, so they ARE probably and mostly right.  By and large, "artist's statements" and exhibit prefaces are appalling.  

"Everything goes to market."

I'm not comparing the quality of this picture to a Leiter--don't get me wrong.  It is just the reflective surfaces and the bright splotch of red and the 2D/3D depth that appeal to me much as many Leiter photographs do.  There is an everyday quality to it.  

Blah, blah, blah.  

“A photographer's gift to the viewer is sometimes beauty in the overlooked ordinary,” Leiter said.

Yea.  There's that.