!I bought a print awhile back, of the Camino, a road from France to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela. The print was in a series of images in our library exploring the nature of roads. In my print , standing on the road, a trail really, was a solitary lengthened shadow of a pilgrim supported by a stick. and the low sun, the sense of impending twilight, and the antiqued paper gave the road the quality of roughness and endless distance.
A road always suggests a journey ; leaving somewhere, or something, or someone and going to somewhere or something. But the gist of the journey is the process, not the beginning nor the end. Not the future and not the past. The shadow on the road is fully on contact with it and its shape changes with the position of the sun on the traveler. Our shadow portrays the nature of our journey much more than we credit. The shadow looks forward and backward throughout the journey, leading and following, and foreshortened, watches the traveler from one side or the other as well, through much of the day. , the traveler footsore, and his progress is confined by the direction of the roadway.
If it was the Road to Zanzibar Dorothy Lamour makes with her friends, or the Yellow Brick Road , or the Camino Road, that place. is where we are. This is where we are a step at a time and and moving that distance at a step. In my print the solitary figure with a stick expressed by the shadow gives a feeling to the viewer of the loneliness of the roadway. There is no Bing Crosby or Bob Hope to accompany Dorothy ! There is no Toto to accompany the other Dorothy ! There is no bicycle or automobile , just a narrow road in my print for which a step is the only present and the only reality. My print could have been anywhere because a road is a metaphor for life.
I have never taken the Camino, the roadway to Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St. James and I am now too old to do it, but a road, is a road , is a road and we all are on a roadway to somewhere and leaving somewhere with a goal of sorts. We may find during the journey the shape of our shadow changed and sometimes learned from the roadway the real purpose was something else !
A road always suggests a journey ; leaving somewhere, or something, or someone and going to somewhere or something. But the gist of the journey is the process, not the beginning nor the end. Not the future and not the past. The shadow on the road is fully on contact with it and its shape changes with the position of the sun on the traveler. Our shadow portrays the nature of our journey much more than we credit. The shadow looks forward and backward throughout the journey, leading and following, and foreshortened, watches the traveler from one side or the other as well, through much of the day. , the traveler footsore, and his progress is confined by the direction of the roadway.
If it was the Road to Zanzibar Dorothy Lamour makes with her friends, or the Yellow Brick Road , or the Camino Road, that place. is where we are. This is where we are a step at a time and and moving that distance at a step. In my print the solitary figure with a stick expressed by the shadow gives a feeling to the viewer of the loneliness of the roadway. There is no Bing Crosby or Bob Hope to accompany Dorothy ! There is no Toto to accompany the other Dorothy ! There is no bicycle or automobile , just a narrow road in my print for which a step is the only present and the only reality. My print could have been anywhere because a road is a metaphor for life.
I have never taken the Camino, the roadway to Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St. James and I am now too old to do it, but a road, is a road , is a road and we all are on a roadway to somewhere and leaving somewhere with a goal of sorts. We may find during the journey the shape of our shadow changed and sometimes learned from the roadway the real purpose was something else !
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