What’s around the corner?

I never fail to be captured by this little piece of path that I walk a couple of times a week, that I have walked for more years than I can remember, that I have photographed in every season and light conditions, but whose essential elements I have yet to catch satisfactorily in a picture. This image comes courtesy of my cell phone, taken today, its’ only purpose to introduce the immediacy of the visual, my visual, today.

This view, this vignette is so familiar, my delight in it quite visceral. But I have come to recognize that is serves as some kind of metaphor for me: no doubt that is why I keep trying to capture some amorphous quality that simply doesn’t appear in the photographs. Much as I have photographed the scene over the course of years, I embark now on the idea of painting the word picture that illuminates the metaphor. I do not know how long this shall take, but since I love the tradition of a year and a day, this shall be my striving: to write, over the course of the next year and the one day, of what it means.

I do not mean to be mysterious, my imaginary friend. Have patience: the world does not much encourage delving deeply into the qualities that inspire and inform our very humanity, but of a certainty that means nothing. You have been chosen as my imaginary friend precisely for this reason, that we should carry out the quest together. I shall only ask you to consider this: what fills you with wonder?