"Prayers of Steel"

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

From 'Cornhuskers', published in 1918 by Carl Sandberg (1878 - 1967)



The design of this pyramid shaped steel cheese grater reminds me a bit of New York's Chrysler Building, which I saw glittering in the sunshine from the top of the Empire State Building when I first visited the Big Apple in the mid-90's. I think it's the most elegant skyscraper ever, but then having worked in Broadcasting House for 35 years it's inevitable that I'm a fan of Art Deco...

I now have a growing pile of images to backblip - I've been too distracted with other things lately to blip each day. And I confess I've (hopefully temporarily) lost my creative mojo a bit too, for lack of interesting situations to photograph. One of the few things I miss about being in London every week is the abundance of opportunities it offered, especially as I love doing street photography. I find it's just not possible to do in a small Essex village and a modest Buckinghamshire market town, where the pavements are not exactly teeming with anonymous crowds. I'm sure my enthusiasm will return, but at the moment there are just too many emergency blips finding their way into my journal which is not what I started doing it for.