Paduk fan
Derekwin
Something about the tone and rhythm of the flute playing softly on the coffee shop’s sound system makes me think it’s some indigenous South American music. I sit at a small table, my laptop open, a tall latte beside it, looking at the severe face of an elderly Korean man. At the other end of the shop a woman in a sober business suit sits alone at her own small table, speaking quietly but with intensity into her cell phone. Twice in the last few minutes, people have bustled in, ordered coffee to go, paid for it, and hurried out. All the while I have been looking at this face.
How much the world has changed for that man over the course of his life. How strange it would be for him to realize his photograph was taken a few short hours ago as he stood in a Confucian shrine built in the late 14th Century, watching two people play a game that’s been in existence for 2500 years. How strange it would be for him to think his face has been digitized and packeted off into the Internet ether, or that a man sitting at a table in a small, quiet coffee shop in the middle of the United States, listening to South American flute music, would snatch his face out of the air and be captivated by it.
The flute music has ended, replaced by something more generic. Across the room, the woman still talks into her cell phone, though her intensity has muted. I wonder what this man would make of it all.
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
