The Problem With Signs (Seeing Tips and Imagining Icebergs)
Regret Life?
I sit outside the World Financial Center facing a sign built into the rails of a fence that says “REGRET LIFE”.
This is an odd sign for a public space, even in public financial space.
In fact, it’s only my side of the fence that urges this vital remorse; if I look at the other side of the bend, slightly to my left, I read the words “SOME OTHER SIGN THAT PEOPLE DO NOT TOTALLY”…. (There are more words on that side, words that precede “SOME OTHER SIGN” but the glare’s just too intense for me to make them out right now.)
This is a problem with signs. (And, maybe, life.) It’s often hard to see the complete message at one go.
It’s a particular problem if you are relatively quick in the gaze area, someone who jumps to conclusions, who sees tips and imagine icebergs.
This tendency is made exponentially worse by even the slightest poetic temperament. Such a temperament is generally accompanied by a confirmed belief in synecdoche; it looks hard for the symbolic and nearly always finds it. In the world of the poetic, a single act is found to sum up an entire relationship, even a lifetime; the minor escalates to the global.
Ah, drama.
The sun still shines brilliantly, but the air has shifted suddenly to the chilly. It’s not a matter of clouds; some (literally) minute change of solar angle has simply reduced the light’s warmth.
Still, it seems pretty darn sunny over the Hudson. And beautiful. People wear sunglasses around me! At almost 6 in the evening!
“TOTALLY/ REGRET LIFE,” I read now in the bend of the fence, the actual corner, until my gaze broadens again (almost instantly): “DO NOT”.
Have a Nice Weekend!
Tags: Do Not Totally Regret Life, escalating to the global, manicddaily, ManicDDaily watercolor and pencil drawing, seeing tips and imagining icebergs, Sunset on the Hudson, the poetic temperament, World Financial Center
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