The immense complexity of the city and its people is evident in every one of my walks.
A city is like a small slice of the larger human world. Many individuals heading in different directions, or forward together…talking or silently thinking…interacting in the places where they work, rest, shop, live. You see the complexity in the streets signs and the architecture, in restaurant menus and colorful store windows. You see it on the active sidewalks, in styles of dress, facial expressions, postures of ambition or resignation. A city and its people are too complicated to ever adequately describe.
Much of the complexity rises from the ongoing tangle of human desires, predilections, emotions. One thing that seems constant in the world is human yearning. And those yearnings often create tension.
Today I walked around downtown. I came upon a political rally at the County Administration Building. Roused citizens, desiring liberty, were chafing at the slow reopening of society during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They expressed their reasons. They yearned for individual liberty. But others in our society yearn for collective security. It’s that never-ending political conflict.
As I continued my walk, I turned my eyes upward to see the mysterious, ordered windows where different people work and live. And I looked at the intersecting streets and sidewalks, where separate lives move forward.
All that human complexity makes a city what it is. It also makes every single walk every single day fascinating. And thought-provoking.
Even during the current COVID-19 pandemic, when the city seems more lonely and troubled than usual.
He was simply resting in the sun.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
If the above images feel almost like a poem, it was my intention. To read a few philosophical stories I’ve written, click Short Stories by Richard.
This afternoon I saw some street art that seems appropriate for the time we now live in. It was painted at the corner of Market Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown San Diego.
During the coronavirus pandemic, strangers, friends and neighbors are careful to stay physically separated from each other to minimize the spread of the deadly virus. But strangely, in spiritual ways, the crisis has brought many closer together. Like one human family.
I believe this simple but powerful street art was created last summer by @sarahstieber and @arielletonkin before the coronavirus made it’s first appearance. Two people are separated, but reach around a terrible hard corner toward one another.
We are apart but still together.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Do you like to read stories with surprise endings?
I finished writing another very short story. This one features a turn of events at the end that is completely unexpected. The story is titled Poem to Myself.
Like most of my fiction this piece is a bit philosophical, and it contains both darkness and light.
How is that possible when the main character is a self-centered creep?
There’s a poem in it somewhere? Will the light triumph?
Life is a blessing and a heartache. Love one another.
I saw some bittersweet art in Bankers Hill today as I walked up a sidewalk past the windows of a small business. I’m not certain, but I believe this artwork was created during the present coronavirus pandemic.
Powerful words in one window are both uplifting and heartbreaking. Several images nearby include a girl on a swing wearing a face covering, which I photographed.
I notice many people are becoming more philosophical lately.
Pondering life.
Thinking about the human heart.
Assessing what is truly important.
Art in a Bankers Hill window during the coronavirus pandemic. A girl on a swing…with a face covering.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera. You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter.
The big 40th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade was held this afternoon along San Diego’s beautiful Embarcadero. So many faces were radiant with optimism and love.
Isn’t that the way our world should be?
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Cool San Diego Sights! 