Greenwich & Bank Streets, 8:35 a.m. 4/10/08

April 28th, 2008

I don’t think this photo quite works. You can’t really see the people - I had to shoot with a wide-angle setting on my zoom to get in the whole intersection - and there is nothing striking or graceful about the composition. Yet wistfully or not, I still think I see a hint of what I was after - the strange phenomenon I was trying to illustrate.

There have been moments now and then in the city when I have glanced around the street at the pedestrians and realizeed that whereas a second before they had all been aimless and scattered, hurrying raggedly on their separate ways, now they are suddenly moving in absolutely perfect unison, ordered and graceful, as if everyone were cooperating; as if we had decided to represent a great clockwork.

Some walk swiftly, others slowly, yet these seeming differences are actually connections. No matter how busy the street such moments seem to unfold in a tremendous silence. It gives me the idea there is a similar silence behind everything we do.

I have no idea why this happens. It’s not often at all, and it can’t be willed. If there is an emotion involved it’s a combination of surprise and pleasure. The first couple of times it happened I thought of it as purely aesthetic in nature. Only recently has it occurred to me it might also be a glimpse of something more - but I’m not sure. I don’t know if other people have similar experiences.

Entry Filed under: Photos, Mindfulness