daveograve@
Bubbles
There are paintings by 17th century Dutch artists showing children blowing soap bubbles from a clay pipe. So we’ve been doing this for at least four centuries. Four hundred years, and it hasn’t gotten old yet.
Maybe it’s because soap bubbles themselves are so ephemeral…so delicate and transitory that we never have time to grow weary of them. We create them, but they don’t belong to us. They drift away on the slightest of breezes. They evaporate and pop, or settle on something and collapse in on themselves. Oh, a few scientists will preserve them and study them; that’s not a bad thing, but it runs counter to the spirit of soap bubbledom.
We all say that soap bubbles are for the children, and surely their delight in them is more effusive and vocal. But don’t let that fool you. Teens love soap bubbles too, and so do older folks, and those geezers sitting on the bench. There may be less squealing involved, but the joy is the same. So long as the soap bubble bloops out and drifts around like Tinkerbelle’s quiet sister, the joy will always be the same.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
