Frames

Yesterday I needed to buy new shoes. The old ones are literally down at heal but the deciding moment came midweek with the discovery of the hole (just visible in the photo) in the right sole.

I don't look forward to buying shoes for work. As much if not more than any other item of apparel they display the wearers character. They are so ego related. The shoe also affects how one walks which affects mood and that then feeds into your whole day. I am not exaggerating, it's statement buying a pair of shoes. And then they need to be comfortable (well, they do for me). For work to be worn with collar and tie (though often now ties are out) I generally stick with the ever neither in nor out of fashion brogue. I hesitated for a while over some more stylish alternatives and I do ware a pair with a bit more edge but in the end got a pair much like the old ones. For non work times I am generally in trainers of a style appropriate to my age. Alas my friends seem to frown at my old Dr Martins.


Town was less busy than I expected given the Christmas shopping thing and I guess that's connected to the current financial climate. People are going to suffer as a result of the world banking problems and that's not good. However, I can't help but feel we are looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. People doing less consuming less and thus affording the opportunity to cause less environmental harm could offer a more sustainable future. If we cut our cloth a bit, got a bit less dragged about by the advertising industry, took care of those affected by the transition from one set of values (unfettered capitalism) to an alternative set (multiple spheres of community where the balance of things is not just weighed in money) then we might just start to see this as opportunity. There is always change, the Tao is in our activities but much of the world economic system seems arranged around change for the sake of it or rather for the sake of making people desire more. This can't be sustainable. And besides, I could just go and get the same shoe I had last time, no need for a fashion driven market to have restyled them! Oh I see the danger, it could all end up looking like the old Eastern block. Umm, but you get the point.


My partner (DC) and I went to the theatre in the evening and in the cafe/bar area was a photography exhibition. Some good stuff. What is it that makes a good photo? DC asked. He is a university prof. working in musicology and cultural theory and so it's not just a vague sort of question. We played about with it for a minute or two; capturing a moment, telling a tale, the camera always lying (sic) as the accomplished photographer decides what to include and exclude to get the shot or the inept photographer missing something that would make the shot. The camera like our own senses never gets the whole picture. But there is the picture that in excluding makes manifest a general truth not necessarily obvious at the scene. Those are the pictures we remember.


I took the above picture with my phone (and to use DC's joke I then squirted it into my type writer or laptop. Funny business post modernism). If I had been up to it I could have composed the shot and used a better camera and created a shot full of pathos. Poor down a heal chap, the hard toil, etc, etc. All of which would be a fiction. But I didn't, I just took a snap and pasted it in. I don't know what you will see in it. We frame out to make sense of the world and in doing so we make the world. Maybe we should take more care making our frames. I know I should.