This has nothing to do with apartments, really, but everything to do with therapy, and the subway.
For all of the time I spend on it every day, I feel as if it is my patio - if my apartment were to have such a luxury. Now that the weather has gotten hotter, my place to read the morning paper or get lost in the latest Harry Potter novel has become a sweaty, overcrowded steamroom.
I am stuck between unacquainted neighbors, a sea of faces, arms and bellies.
I was contemplating this when I stopped at my local flower shop before my home commute, while I took photos of a plant with miniscule clusters of rose-like blossoms. On close inspection, these blossoms numbered in the thousands, all no more than 10 millimeters.
That evening commute was the most crowded I have been in, on the hottest day, with the trains not running as scheduled. As I stood among the passengers that seemed to fit themselves together as a ragged jigsaw puzzle, the image of that flower cluster through my lens flashed to my eyes. Looking around I only saw a cluster of flowers, and it was instantly cooler.
The Japanese use the ringing of windchimes to achieve the same type of mental trickery; when they hear the wind blow, their minds think that it is cooler. Smiling through a sea of people, imagining them all as a small blossom in a tight cluster - that is mine. MN
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
How wonderful! The image is very close to an Ezra Pound couplet too:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
nora--
That is the first thing that came to my mind, too!
Although the Pound line seemed a little bleak (Pound, beak?! No!), and Matt's seemed like wonderful, necessary escapism.
Matt,
You have a beautiful way with words. I love how you find inspiration in the things around you. Many of us walk quickly by the flowers and just see a blur, missing the gorgeous clusters. :)
Keep it up.