Sunday Ritual

Most Sundays, if I take out the trash I tend to keep on walking down my alley to the local coffee shop. Part of it is due to habit, and another part is due to me just figuring it’s an efficiency thing. As long as I’m out, I might as well grab some coffee as well.

Today, I had my camera with me, as there was a mailbox near the coffee shop that I wanted to take a picture of. Unfortunately, it wasn’t positioned in the way that I hoped, so I didn’t get the shot. But I did snap a few on my way to get coffee.

This is just outside my front door, near the fenced off area that leads around the corner. I’m not sure if they were part of some older gate or what, but they’ve been here for as long as I can remember.

I like this shot better, mainly because it’s that one spike against the blurred rest.

Note to self: research fences more. There must be some deeper history, as far as their function defending castles and the like from invaders. And yet, over time, we’ve kept things like spikes and arrow-tips on fences, less for prevention and more for ornamentation.

This is my alley.

And this? This is a quotation from Nelson Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make:

It isn’t hard to love a town for its greater and its lesser towers, its pleasant parks or its flashing ballet. Or for its broad and bending boulevards, where the continuous headlights follow, one dark driver after the next, one swift care after another, all night, all night and all night. But you never truly love it until you can love its alleys too.

I have never read Algren’s work, and perhaps it’s time for me to take one small step forward. Whenever I’m walking around in an alleyway, I think of this quotation (the last line in particular). However, I don’t think of Algren. I think of my friend Alex, who first cited Algren to me.

When I’m walking around an alley, I hear Nelson’s words, but Alex’s voice.

I’m not sure what this is. Halfway down the alley, I noticed this, shimmering against the pole. From the looks of it, it seems like some kind of marker used by possibly the electric company. My guess was that this served as a kind of timestamp, stating when someone had last inspected it, etc. That’s my guess, anyhow.

I take a lot of photos in alleys, particularly the one behind my apartment. Some days, I think if I just wandered around enough, I could take pictures all day.

Someday, I need to actually do that.