“Where is that protection that I needed?
Air can hurt you too” ~Talking Heads
.jpg)
Army Surplus Store, East Broadway, Vancouver, 1991
These Monday picture posts aren’t so much miscellaneous as they are motivational, an impulse which perhaps we find in short supply in these days of isolation and anxiety.
I missed last week’s self-assignment and admit to similar malaise this week. I share with many the stress of evaporated opportunities in business and pleasure.
This photo reminds me that dire poverty did not stop me from scrounging together enough for a roll of film and hitting the streets in search of meaning … or, more often, further confusion. In this case, what use would someone have, in Vancouver, in 1991, for military materiel designed for use in chemical or germ warfare scenarios?* The 1990s seem carefree in retrospect.
With the streets off limit, I’ll now return to pottering around my garden, which is at least large enough to get some fresh air, after the last move.
Best wishes. I hope you may find solace amongst your memories or a new wonder, perhaps in a corner of green nearby.
*There’s no evidence to suggest SARS–CoV–2 is an escaped bioweapon.
Technical — Camera: Nikon FM | Lens: 24mm f/2.8 | Film: Kodak TMax 400 @ 400 | Dev: TMax 1:4, 6 min. @ 24°C
ian chatwin - I loved this store as a kid. I would take a detour on my way home from school, poke around, and imagine going to war in the Grandview cut.March 31, 2020 – 2:51 pm
Raymond Parker - Born just after the end of WW II, there were still plenty of artifacts of war in family homes, not the least of them gas masks which us kids innocently and eagerly donned for games of war. I can still recall the smell of the rubber.
Our favourite location for such amusements was a vast area of “slag heaps” left over from coal mining in my English hometown. These, in turn, contained fumaroles that by whatever kind of ignition smouldered and belched flames. Among these smoking hills, we launched our attacks, armed with guns carved from scrap wood. I recall that mine was painted as black as the soot that soon coated us from head to toe.
Again innocently, during one battle on the school grounds, some of my comrades scrawled swastikas on a wall. We were all hauled into the headmaster’s office for a good tongue-lashing.
“But Sir, we are the Germans.”April 1, 2020 – 9:57 am