Words That Flame In The Art Of Racing In The Rain
It has been a while since I did one of these “words that flame” posts because I have been in writing mode myself and don’t read much while in that space. But on a recent long airplane journey I did read Garth Stein’s The Art Of Racing In The Rain and marked passages that seem to speak to me–my words that flame.
A bit of explanation: the narrator is a golden retriever mix whose owner (Denny) drives race cars and is known for his ability to race in the rain. Race car driving is used in the book as a metaphor for living, particularly for living when it seems to be pouring and the track of life is slick.
Making Weighty Matters Light And Light Matters Weighty
As it is with making photographs, so it is with the pictures we make of our lives…
That pictures should be balanced is another general compositional rule. Subject elements are weighted and assigned different degrees of importance depending on their size and their tone or color. (Patricia Caulfield in Capturing The Landscape With Your Camera)
I assigned weight to elements of the three pictures in this post by using color selectively. My choices about where to assign weight were deliberate, but in our lives we often assign weight to objects or events out of habit or predisposition, or because assigning weight in one way or another serves a purpose of which we are unaware. Thus we make weighty matters light and light matters weighty, and sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t.
Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
