18 agosto 2007

From 0.0


Disorganization. Focus.

(Entropy? Order?)

Hiding behind 'anonymous'
let's add a bit to the
'why' column at right.
No blogs, please, but
here we are.

We explored a bit of the
Alps' beginnings from Turin,
by bicycle, during the August
holidays. Up the Ala di Stura.

There we saw a strange thing
that wanted photographing.

Day up, again by bicycle,
dragging 8x10 view camera
in the 'B.O.B.' trailer.
Up and up.
Sprawling the bike, trailer,
shopping bags of film holders,
camera, and stuff, quick to
get to making the photograph.


What's the difference between
making a photograph
and a train wreck?

Quick-witted answer:

'In the one, more people get off track.'



Let us off track get.

Starting from oh-ZERO.
Zero. Point. Zero.
.

Friday

Professional Curtsies

Look. I'm trying to get a discount (that's slang in Italian, you figure it out) on a road sign. A red circle enclosing icons for a bicycle, a handcart, and a horsecart. As in you 19th-century guys stay out of this street. In 2007. But this is tricky. You can't just walk up at four-thirty p.m., pull out your wrench, and go to work. So I'd spotted a couple of candidates nearby, low enough on their poles and so on. It's midnight now, I've just come in from an hour and a half hoofing it to check things out.

First candidate, nice access but a busy street, lots of apartments looming on every side, bad visibility. Even though it is Saturday night, the amount of traffic action seems pretty absurd.

Next, about the same. Giving up I trudged along Corso Regina Margherita, a main boulevard with two double-lane high-speed roadways, then medians with trees and a frontage lane on each side. It comes to a huge intersection with an equally expansive street. There's a school on one side and an electricity substation on the other. Lots more big trees. The far side of the intersection might as well be on Mars, it's so far away. On the third corner, an endless gravel lot, on the far side of which carnivals and the circus set up shop. The fourth, who cares.

Still, though, there was quite a steady flow of cars and the position is right where eastbound drivers pretty well have to look at this particular sign. Aside from that, even though it was nearly midnight there were a remarkable number of pedestrians hanging around. Mostly professional women. On the north side, a leggy blonde. A nice Muslim from ex-Yugoslavia, or Ukrainian Orthodox, maybe. On the south corner where the street lights were out, the Senegal-Tunisia-Libya Animist fringe were hanging out. Salespersons, by their getups. Friendly, outgoing, good communications skills, willing to take the initiative in any encounter. And of quite apparently robust, flexible physical health.

Decided I'd need to recalculate the best time of day for this. Maybe late on a Sunday morning while everybody is in church, except for the sales staff who are probably sleeping off a hard day's night? Or-- four a.m. on a Monday, drowned out by advancing squads of garbage collectors? I turned for home, only to discover that different corners support specialty markets. Well, what's new. At the next corner I passed a 40-ish woman at the curb hassling a kid who looked all of 17, slouching astride his scooter. In a snatch of their exchange I caught the figure 'fifteen' followed by 'not enough' -- 'non basta'. Just opposite strutted a bevy (the proper herd-word?) of teenybopper gum popper ho's. Real cuties, Imus(t) say. One might have been 16, the rest, well, one averts one's eyes.

Aside to pc. Honey, times is we calls a spade a spade. This writer invokes Imus-isms as code for the destruction of women in this manner, in a social callousness we all indulge.

Fifteen minutes later and back at my door it occurred to me that the best time for a good discount was probably right then. Everybody's out there, the competition and distraction levels are fierce. There's lots of coming and going. Or going and coming. What with sins of emission (if not commission) on every font (sic-- front?) --who the hell would care about one more sin of omission? Of a little street sign.

To be continued...

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