Digging for Meaning

While walking over the overbridge over the train tracks, I saw the rail tracks glistening with the light of yellow signal. The yellow long lines dividing the dark into equal twos, textured and raw, with the smell of metal and sweat of urban nation. The east side dark ended with jagged edges of station roof - the undulating continuity of shades of gray and grime. the west side dark went on only until the pillar standing in between me and it. Then a bird came and sat over the signal. Almost in dark. The light from signal of no consequence to it (apart from possible heat of the metal on its feet). Still its black eyes managed to shine a dark shine against its black body. I so wanted to capture the moment into a photograph framed thus - the focus on the bird pirched on signal. though the tracks visible just as well, and so is the dark. essentially, to capture the whole experience of being there, but I couldn't do it. U have to have a central focus in a pic to give meaning to it. Thats ...

This post started as a response to a comment made by a friend to the earlier post. But my thought took me a little further than they should have, so am posting the ramblings here as a post. well, the earlier post alludes to something grander and something that runs through many of my earlier posts and has consonance with what you said. reality is something that one constructs about oneself. reality isn't an absolute. Mahatma Gandhi's quote 'to your own truth, to your wisdom, thats where u must go', has stuck with me like anything, and lends itself to the notion of reality and here it ties up with the question of vision. Our 'truth', our 'wisdom' is constrained in the frame of our vision. I celebrate that increment in conscience with increased field of vision in the earlier post. Secondly, the thought was inspired from an observation when looking. The vision of man. if I am to talk in terms of photography, Ayn Rand's 'man' would be picturised ...

When I was much younger, I would sit plumb in front of TV for hours on end. I used to do my homework, sheepishly looking towards TV in skew or hooded eyes, trying to fool parents in believing me that i was indeed studying, and i just 'needed' to 'listen' to TV. Looking back now, i feel that might be the reason behind my habitual forward tilted low gaze. Whenever i realised my posture, i would correct it with upward tilt of my head. A few days back, I realised something beautiful. Upon that habitual realisation and subsequent jerk of my face upwards, I noticed the difference between the world that one sees. When one looks with low eyes the object of ur gaze is at the top half of your vision. The thought is restricted with the 'purpose' of gaze. Besides the colors that usually pervade for this pose are dark and mundane - concrete, road, furniture, people.... There's a sense of being constrained. No escape from the trivial, the mundane. The sea of mediocrity ...