Out Wandering Around...

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Yesterday afternoon I was out wandering around
I set out specifically to go photograph a poster of a clown
Seen the day before on the way to work
For if not photographed, things like this tend to disappear... forever
A red traffic light in a small town had forced me to stop
Right next to the clown, with time to see it out the side window
With time to make a mental note to return with the camera soon
And somehow despite all the distractions of the ensuing day
On the way home I remembered, so yesterday on waking up I went
Out to wander around, to photograph a clown
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Sometimes I wonder whether a given photo is better in black and white . . . what do you think ?
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Here is the full scene as seen along a local road . . .
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On the way back home from the clown town, I couldn't resist the temptation to stop at a nearby cemetery, which I've stopped in before, but I wanted to take another look. As is almost always the case when going back to a place already visited, I saw details there yesterday that I hadn't noticed before; a few of them follow here.
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A decorative ceramic cross from years ago, decorations made these days seem decidedly lacking in heart and soul when compared to the crafts of yesterday.
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For some reason these fake plastic flowers really grabbed me . . .
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This next one made me think of Bob Dylan's "Everything is Broken" . . .
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If you've been following these pages for any length of time, you may recall seeing some other fading faces from graveyard photographs. Old photographs like this one that were printed on a ceramic oval, and then which have faded over the years in the sun and rain and frost and fog, never fail to captivate me entirely, to entrance, to enchant, and to inspire me to take the photograph, so as to remember this face before it is entirely gone. Will my photographs also fade away into oblivion one day ?
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To quote from the Dylan song mentioned above :
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"Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin'
Everything is broken"
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More plastic flowers. We live in an increasingly plastic world. Even some cemetery memories are left in plastic.
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Rust eats away slowly but surely . . .
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Even angels are not left untouched by rust . . ..

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Flowers, real and plastic alike, end up in the detritus bin. I always liked that word : "detritus". I wonder what detritus I will leave behind when I go, before I too end up in the detritus bin ? A pile of photographs, a few poems, an echo of a song played on an acoustic guitar ? .


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Footnote added to this post Tuesday night : ... my gut instinct to go back quickly on Sunday and do the above photos of the clown poster with hip hop rappers coming out of his head was justified, as when I went by this afternoon on the way to work, the rapper poster had already been torn off to make room for a new ad poster for the Club, leaving the clown with half his head torn off. After taking this photo on my cell phone I tore off the rest of the remaining clown face, brought it home as a souvenir of this post. It just goes to show, you should always photograph something when you see it if you think it is worth a photo, because it may not be there tomorrow.
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