An abstract feeling of geography and voyaging.
My father, whom I'm more like than anyone in the world except for one other person, is on his way here even as I type, and our plan is to blow town the moment we're able and go out exploring my neck of the woods, something I don't get to do as much as I'd like. After several weeks of gritting my teeth and groping my way through a relentlessly busy but surreally manageable semester, I am suddenly, crushingly in need of an escape from Gambier; my town works this way on people, cocooning us up until we slam into a breaking point, which often comes about three days before leaving town is possible. I'm ready to get out for a little while. Even a few hours will help.
Not far from here is an area full of antique stores--and I'm hoping that at least some of those stores are on the more junk-oriented end of the antique store spectrum. I've never actually pulled off the amazing antique store find (though my father has, and in my favor, no less). But today, inspired by Joseph Cornell (from one of whose 1941 letters today's title comes), I'm in high hopes that I'll find something wondrous. It won't be anything this great:
but a girl can dream. And yes, I know that the last place I'm likely to find something this fine is in a junk-antique store. I just couldn't find exactly what it is that I think I'm seeking this afternoon; somehow, I am hoping to find some birds, or perhaps some maps. Or perhaps maps of birds, though I may have exhausted my lifetime quota for bird maps with the National Geographic migration map I found when I lived in Ithaca and have had hanging on my wall ever since. What my father may not yet know about this afternoon's trip is that he'll be driving, because I'll be taking the pictures, which means I'll also be doing a lot of saying, "Oh, wait! Stop!" The last time he and I took an excursion like this, I was ten and we were hunting down outhouses just after dawn in southern Indiana. That's a story for another time.
source for today's image: UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum.
Not far from here is an area full of antique stores--and I'm hoping that at least some of those stores are on the more junk-oriented end of the antique store spectrum. I've never actually pulled off the amazing antique store find (though my father has, and in my favor, no less). But today, inspired by Joseph Cornell (from one of whose 1941 letters today's title comes), I'm in high hopes that I'll find something wondrous. It won't be anything this great:
but a girl can dream. And yes, I know that the last place I'm likely to find something this fine is in a junk-antique store. I just couldn't find exactly what it is that I think I'm seeking this afternoon; somehow, I am hoping to find some birds, or perhaps some maps. Or perhaps maps of birds, though I may have exhausted my lifetime quota for bird maps with the National Geographic migration map I found when I lived in Ithaca and have had hanging on my wall ever since. What my father may not yet know about this afternoon's trip is that he'll be driving, because I'll be taking the pictures, which means I'll also be doing a lot of saying, "Oh, wait! Stop!" The last time he and I took an excursion like this, I was ten and we were hunting down outhouses just after dawn in southern Indiana. That's a story for another time.
source for today's image: UC Berkeley's Hearst Museum.
posted by Dr. S at 8:51 AM
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