curlsdiva
through the spyhole
So much life has passed over and through every square foot of Edinburgh that sometimes moments from the past slip through into the present. Just moments, ordinary moments, brief transitory scraps of lives long gone. They materialize, then evaporate as easily as snowflakes on the tongue.
It’s always on the periphery of your vision. Just a fleeting, ephemeral half-glimpse…and if you turn to look it disappears, melding seamlessly into the present, coyly seducing you to doubt what you saw. The horse-drawn cart is a kid on a bike; the pikeman in plaid is a woman with a shopping bag; the medieval spire is a tandoori restaurant. The past will not abide a direct gaze.
But…but if you resist the urge to look. If you let your eyes go slightly unfocused. If you give over to the ambiguity, you can briefly see the indistinct shapes of lives lived in Dùn Èideann. You can. You really can.
But, of course, you don’t believe it. How could you? You insist on looking.
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
