Over the course of a single lifetime an inquisitive soul will have seen countless day-to-day occurrences, some of which remain imprinted on the brain for years. A passing observation may trigger a rush to judgement or make you ponder cause and effect.
Looking, and being aware, is how we develop or confirm intuition and cultural perception. Photographs are useful in preserving psychological reference data, but seldom fill in the matrix.
A recent rummage through some adolescent mementos turned up two snapshots taken on a mid/late-Seventies New York City trip. The view, across what I remember as 6th Avenue, stopped me cold in my tracks. A man was kneeling in front of a restaurant, apparently planting one the sidewalk. Pedestrians ambled by with nonchalant, seen-it-all-before, cursory regard.
There was more interest from one tan-suited businessman with a briefcase, and an impressionable island-boy visitor to lower Manhattan pointing a pre-digital camera through gaps in traffic.
Back then, the Big Apple was a very different place compared to the post-9/11 NYC of today. Neither of us, it occurs to me now, thought that this could've been an Islamic posture of devotion.
In fact, my read, ignoring the possibility of my own ignorance, concluded this was a victim-of-the- streets in the static throes of a mental-breakdown. And I was there to record the moment.
I'm still uncertain what I witnessed. Mr. Brown-Suit approached, tentatively poked and voiced what seemed a caring inquiry. Reaction unforthcoming, he shrugged and moved on. A couple New York minutes and I was on my way too. Never to forget.
Everyone knows that Avenues on the Gotham grid run on a North-South axis. Streets go East to West. This inconclusive detail keeps my memory murky, because Mecca, from there, should be somewhere to the east of Long Island.
