Walking Project 127_abstraction – Altadena from chris worland on Vimeo.

Imagine yourself driving west on Washington, between Hill and Allen. The car tells you the outside temperature is one hundred and one degrees Fahrenheit, but you’re listening to your favorite daily podcast that reports the harrowing, story of a Syrian refugee’s journey to safety, and the sun is shining and so from the inside of your mobile cocoon, it’s a beautiful day.  You reflect for a second about how you should do more to help refugees. You slow down slightly when you notice a lone pedestrian who seems uncertain, maybe lost, about which way to go, or you assume that because he’s standing right on the curb, staring at a street sign. He doesn’t move so you drive past but you can’t help look in the rear view mirror and you see that he has raised his arm up towards the sign, as if he were pointing at it. Eventually, you realize he’s taking a picture of the sign with a phone. You are a bit curious though not curious enough to turn around, or drive around the block to have another look. There’s a part of you that wants to know what the sign said that made it worth photographing, that wants to ask the pedestrian why he’s snapping a picture of it just like you are often tempted to ask fellow guests, when you’re out in some restaurant or other, why they feel compelled to photograph their plates. You don’t get selfies either. But you don’t ask. You drive on. What you don’t know is the pedestrian, perhaps a little affected by the heat, perhaps not–who’s to judge– is not looking at the sign per se, but at a specific letter on the sign. He’s seeing an abstraction of the sign, in the sign. He’s looking beyond the sign. He’s hoping that a minute combination of color, shape and maybe even movement, juxtaposed with a series of other similar images–similar in concept, not in composition or content–can help him express what he’s been thinking since he read the Octavio Paz poem Puerta over a satisfying carnitas torta lunch.

Puerta

 

¿Qué hay detrás de esa puerta?

No llames, no preguntes, nadie responde,

nada puede abrirla,

ni la ganzúa de la curiosidad

ni la llavecita de la razón

ni el martillo de la impaciencia.

No hables, no preguntes,

acércate, pega la oreja:

¿no oyes una respiración?

Allá del otro lado,

alguien como tú pregunta:

¿qué hay detrás de esa puerta?

Mexico City, September 26, 1994

 

Door

 

What’s behind that door?

Don’t knock, don’t ask, no one answers,

nothing can open it,

not the picklock of curiosity

not the little key of reason,

not the hammer of impatience.

Don’t talk, don’t ask,

come closer, put your ear to it,

can’t you hear it breathing?

There, on the other side,

someone like you asks:

what’s behind that door?