Weekly Photo Challenge – (Extra)ordinary
Tag: postaday
Seeking Boundaries
I am newly arrived.
I have just come to this place after many travels, and will settle here.
A house has been given to me, or I have taken a house – I find myself in a house that seems like maybe it belonged to someone before me, but there it is, it is mine now.
This house, this place is out on the edge of and yet part of a community – a school? A town? A hippie commune? A camp?
I am now part of this community in my little new / old house.
But I’m concerned about security.
There have been transgressions before – incidents have occurred in the past, violations of the perimeter have been known to happen.
Absolute securing of all boundaries is necessary.
There are the usual doors – front door, side door, back door. This is my first line of investigation. None of them are particularly sturdy. None of them inspire absolute confidence.
But there are also 2 doors at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the second floor – a pair of wooden doors that seal the upstairs from any intruders that may make their way into the first floor.
One of these wooden doors doesn’t close properly – it won’t lock.
This is a concern.
Upstairs I am rooting around in things, cleaning the place, looking for tools, turning over the problem of the less than sturdy doors, the unlocked door in my mind.
Up on this second level there are piles of rich colourful fabrics scattered around on the floors.
Some movement underneath the fabric turns out to be 2 tiny translucent kittens. As if they are so young and so new and so tender, they aren’t quite actually there yet – they are mere outlines, and are otherwise see-through.
It wasn’t in the plan for this house, to take on cats, but hey, what the heck, the wee things need a place to live I figure, and I go back to fretting about the doors, the precedent of boundary breaches, how to create more security.
In no time the kittens are already becoming cats – one orange, one a sandy brown – no longer translucent, but taking more and more substance all the time.
It will be good to have these cats around.
Animals on the property is a good thing.
It occurs to me I should consult with the other people here in the community about how to fix the doors – surely someone does carpentry, a locksmith… There must be people I can ask about securing all entrances.
But I realize the problem in this new place, as in so many places I have been…
I don’t know who to trust.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Boundaries
Big lake, big thaw, splash of orange
Seven degrees today and everyone was out, the streets bustling again after so many cold quiet weeks and months.
Early in the morning I felt the pull down to the beach, down to the water, some deep hankering need to see the lake.
Sigh….YES. That expanse of water, so big it only freezes along the edges, the ice now melting and breaking off into mini-icebergs.
What is it about large bodies of water that are so powerful, so enchanting?
I lingered as long as I could, taking photos of nothing in particular, thinking again how photography is really just an excuse for other things – an excuse to be outside, an excuse to talk to people, a means to an end…
Wandering further down the beach there were more people, some of them exploring a series of architecture student installations, strange colourful creations around empty lifeguard posts.
Others were walking their dogs. One orange dog bounded happily down the beach and into the water, only to stop short as the iciness hit his legs and made him think again –
Poor fellow.
I thought immediately of another photo I had from the summer, of a dog bounding in just so, at precisely this same location, but his happiness was entirely unmitigated.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Orange








