Francisco de Pájaro, Art Is Trash, London 2013
I recently received The Book of Delights by Ross Gay from a dear friend. I started reading it (delight!) while waiting for my car to get serviced–and it inspired the recognition of this delight:
I am delighted by a spot in the middle of a major intersection near my home where various items gather. Auto parts, rocks, shards of glass, and the like find their way to the exact center of this intersection. The stuff there is so perfectly centered that cars turning or passing through don’t run them over or otherwise disturb them.
It’s all the rage in sophisticated circles to go on about de-centering this or that. Well, I am delighted by these weird, radically centered things of the world that few people notice and cannot (easily/safely) be reached.
I am further delighted by the thought of walking out into the middle of the intersection–not so much to investigate the items gathered there but rather to become one of them.
Will I be so perfectly centered in the road that people will ignore and not disturb me? Perhaps such radical centering requires a lot of practice or luck or . . . ?
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