In the shadows

Who doesn’t relish a find! Not unlike car accidents most of the worthiest discoveries are within a 5 mile radius of home, basically in your own back yard! It is perhaps a small compliment that my recognition of the proximity of this unearthing is a result of the COVID pandemic (which limits the horizon of one’s exploration) and my physical decline (which prohibits my interest in prolonged walking).  Only today for example as I hobbled up Mill Street from the book store to the car parked adjacent the Old Town Hall I recalled my last punishing attempt to mount the stairs in Rome; and, how a similar congestion would await any revisit to Paris for other than a short trot to the nearest café to sit watching the traffic go by.

“The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) are a set of steps in Rome, Italy, climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top.

Like the fabric of a finely woven cloth or expertly cultivated silk scarf the exotic ingredients in even a rural hamlet are not immediately apparent. The secrets are delicately hidden in the shadows of the superstructure. And what a thrill it is to stumble unwittingly upon a hitherto unknown – or unappreciated – boon!

A similar elevation can attend any uncalculated project. Without expectation or anticipation of advantage one may blunder upon an undisguised exhilaration of equivocal design. Perhaps it requires an arrested mind, an element of obscured participation. This is an odd admission because normally my unrepentant conviction is towards mathematical certainty – what I confess is an obsessive manipulation. Yet from the hardened blur of certainty arises the drama of impossibility.