Tuesday May 18, 2010

If I hadn’t been delayed for long hot hours in Wallingford and New Haven, Connecticut (for which I should probably thank rather than curse Amtrak in light of the fact that I quite enjoyed watching kids riding bikes by old churches, girls in very high heels parading like tipsy herons, my mad taxi driver from Togo shouting into his cell phone while speeding down Route 91, and a troubled old woman reading loudly from the Bible as she successfully panhandled tired travelers–well, but not me, not after she called me “Grandpa”)… If in hadn’t been for all that, I would spend 20 minutes looking at this picture and another 20 minutes commenting on it. But I’m only due to have four hours sleep, so I’ll just say that I think this image packs an awful lot of story into an ostensibly simple scene. Just look at the exquisite little reflections round the neck of our hero, Big Bottle. Or the regiments of glasses marching off to war on the Upper East Side. Or the mysterious message on the table next to the bottle, the contents of which we will never know…. If you ever doubt how much compelling information can live and breathe in “details,” take another look at this picture. I raise my glass to this eloquent and elegant photograph.