Beyond the binaries

Before I made this photograph I thought of Arachne and her appreciation for lines and intersections. I don’t know shapes the way she knows them; I seldom even see shapes and am nearly innumerate, but over the years as I have followed her blips, I have come to appreciate imaginative geometries. So this photo, made in the broken window of a derelict factory that I passed on my way to the post office to mail a package to my daughter in Houston, is inspired by Arachne.

I have been reading and thinking about the ideas of Bayo Akomolafe today. He writes like a mystic. The way up and the way down are one and the same. The fire and the rose are one. Or in Akomolafe’s words, “The point of the departed arrow is not merely to pierce the bullseye and carry the trophy: the point of the arrow is to sing the wind and remake the world in the brevity of flight.” He wants us to dissolve the binaries, to find a third way. Not Republicans vs Democrats but something that transcends the deadly game they play against each other, the pendulum between Left and Right. Find another way. 

I’m going out with Seth, Cristina, and the Grands tonight to celebrate my 80th. Posting now because I will be too tired after. It’s 90F/32C, and we will be walking from my place, about seven blocks there and seven back.