Untitled (Mennonite Graveyard)
I took a lot of photos this weekend. I travelled west in Ontario, and then I travelled east. It saddens me to see how much the rural areas are turning into strip malls and suburbs with the same 20 big box stores on perpetual repeat. Some amazing surprises do still exist but they are diminishing.
- Crazy carny clown heads with a small ferris wheel.
- Paris, Ontario. Stone buildings with beautiful tiny stone patterns.
- Seeing the landscape of this region with new eyes.
- I forgot about the hills. I often complain about the flatness but there are hills.
- Fields of soybeans interspersed with rogue wild corn plants. And so many wild edible plants. I could have lived at the edge of that field for at least a few days. And I really wanted to. Or at least until the film and the beans ran out.
- I am strongly against monoculture but I will admit that the patterns of colour and texture created are oddly pleasing.
- Solidago Goldenrod. In bloom everywhere. So maligned.
- How when you pass a field of corn on a diagonal it creates an optical rippling effect.
- A giant ferris wheel in the middle of nowhere.
- Hydro fields (awful but beautiful).
- An abandoned house covered in grafitti.
- Emerging from the train station into the big city after a day spent in the country.
I can't wrap my head around why people are so overwhelmed by the city. I am overwhelmed by the suburbs! I was stuck on the side of the road in Pickering yesterday certain that I would die there. No way out and so dependant on a bus that may never arrive (it did). So many sprawling, hot parking lots and an endless stream of fast cars. In the city I feel like I own the sidewalk. In the suburbs there often aren't sidewalks and even when there are I feel very isolated. Not the kind of comfortable solitude I feel here. Just detached and lonely.
I need to learn how to drive.