at the window
dotintime
It’s astonishing, sometimes, how a photograph can evoke an almost instant and powerful emotional response. This is one of those photographs. Under most circumstances I’d be drawn in by the desperate beauty here, the reminder of how fragile the world can be, and how everything is on an inevitable path to collapse and disorder. I’d be reminded of the reality that the sweetness of life is due, in part, to that fragility. The transience of our existence imbues every moment with perilous, heart-rending beauty
And yet…
And yet today, as I look at this profoundly evocative image—as I write about it—I feel none of that. Why? Because it’s Spring again. Because it was a long, grim winter. Because right now I’m sitting in a sunny little courtyard outside a coffee shop. Because the coffee is strong and sweet, and it was served to me by a young woman wearing a sundress, a woman who has some sort of Maori-design tattoo encircling her upper arm. A young woman with whom I will be hopelessly infatuated for the next hour or so, until I leave the coffee shop.
I love this photograph, and it moves me. I know the beauty of the moment I’m experiencing right now is as fragile and transient as the moment that photo was taken. Right now the emotion this photograph evokes in me is a sense of delight that I’m here in this courtyard, sipping coffee, occasionally squinting against the sun as the woman with the Maori tattoo walks by in her sundress.
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
