dawn at Lake Ella

3/29/2021 – Monday

Completely unrelated to walking Keely, today’s news is all about the COVID vaccine! As in, I’m getting the jab this afternoon! I do not know which brand of it I’m getting, so it might be the first of a two-dose vaccination, but that is still super wonderful news for me!

Of course, it does not mean life goes back to normal. The vax is not 100% immunity, and it’s strongest selling point is in reducing the severity of symptoms if I do get infected. Personally I will continue masking up for the foreseeable future, and still not going to crowded spaces/traveling for a while. Maybe not until 2022, honestly. What’s it cost to be cautious? Not a damn thing!

This morning was actually very cool out, 58°F, with a light breeze. Feeling lazy, I woke up at 5 am but stayed in bed reading for an hour. My father used to do similar, get up super early and be sitting on the back patio, reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar as the sun rose. It was his peaceful quiet time before work, or on the weekends, before working in the yard. I never understood it of course, being a child full of the conflicting desires to sleep in late and also get up and run around. Sitting still for an hour or more after you wake up seemed so odd to me then, but is heavenly now.

The park was still in the dark, as dawn doesn’t even start until after 7 am at this point (that will change quickly as spring springs along). I stopped while Keely was sniffing around and was taken by this perspective of the back of Joe’s Bike Shop, facing Monroe Street.

It’s a bit spooky, a bit plain, and the kind of perspective you just don’t notice much. I think if there is going to be (is already?) a theme to my photography, it is something like “noticing the mundane.” Without a doubt, walking my dog around the city has definitely made me more attuned to these fleeting and, yes, mundane perspectives. One project I keep toying with is taking a photo every day of a local billboard, just to track the changes in lighting and what is being advertised…billboards are actually very ephemeral media, for being so big and loud.