#sewergrate

2020.08.16: Another Grate; Another Lost Ball - Bonus: two recurring themes in one shot! #grate #sewergrate #lostball #loststuff #riversidect #morningwalk #walkingaroundtown #walkingwithacamera (at Riverside) https://www.instagram.com/p/CD9AiWXlEh6/?igshid=1u0qs1w5lwz9u

#rain #rainwater #sewergrate Beofed I took the leaves out more water was going over the grates. Back home in Wisconsin the holes in the grates go parallel to the curb. Tbe spaces were bigger and more water went down. (at Fort Wayne, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7LmyaaHg9l/?igshid=1dctsh209cfxn

Another sewer grate cause why not . . . #photography #photo #depthoffield #sewergrate #sewerlid (at Orlando, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3lKN8_Ht6J/?igshid=1hnx8r88agi2k

I finally got all of my #halloween #decorations done at the front of the house. Complete with a #georgie a #pennywise the #dancingclown a #circus backdrop on our garage door and a #sewergrate with #glowingeyes and a #youllfloattoo #wreath #HappyHalloween #it #ITdecorarions

#sewergrate #denmark #nordsjælland #withoutfilter #visualtrilogy (her: Græsted)

#sewergrate #nordsjællandshospital #nordsjaellandshospitalhillerod #denmark #visualtrilogy (her: Nordsjællands Hospital)

Week 1: TALES FROM THE GRATE *** 1.5.15, 8:34 a.m. The sewer grate is on the corner of Howard and 12th, not Folsom and 11th as I mentally noted it when I selected it as the site of 2015’s first small habit.  I was off one block in either direction.  I have biked past this corner on my way home from work for nearly a decade, and often stop to see what has accumulated through wind and rain, foot traffic and street cleaning. One block later in my evening commute, I pass through banana taffy-scented silicone vapor from a neighborhood car shop.  Josh ribs me for inhaling the toxic fumes that smell great to me in the same way that I loved the dangerous fragrances of gasoline and skunks as a kid. One blazingly hot weekday every summer, Nancy, our mom, would haul me and my two sisters into the skunk cabbage-dense woods and gullies of our little island to construct pie pan gardens as part of our Ag Fair entries.  We gathered soil, and assembled bits of moss, wintergreen, and mayflower in shallow foil rounds before piling back into the boiled car with a near-empty tank that inevitably precipitated an emergency stop at the gas station before *just* making the drop-off deadline.  Nancy insisted - and she was right - that we would feel accomplished for creating and offering our flower arrangements, paper art, and homemade board games as candidates for local acclaim. A night or two later, when we returned to the fair in full swing to check on our standings, we would peek at the adult offerings, and instead of royal blue or red or gold or the most coveted, best-in-show, pale aqua ribbons, we could sometimes spy large, shaming tags disqualifying entries that included endangered plants - orange bursts of butterfly weed or the porcelain curve and droop of lady’s slipper orchids.  Even as a child, I felt at once sorry for the environmental ignorance of those people (summer people?) and incensed at their horticultural miscalculations; how could they take this so lightly when us local kids paid better attention to compete in kind? *** 1.6.15, 6:41 p.m. The Gold Club sign, 10 blocks back, is spectacular: the point before the grate, the other bookend.  Brightness to counter the dim, low, rusted grate.  It’s metallic gold with red, recessed lighting – a calculated, intoxicating combination.  I feel weak when I look at it.  The seasoned doormen and the valet boys bust each other’s balls out front.  Dark suits vs. windbreakers, stubble kept actively at bay vs. downy beards: the men and the boys of the establishment. *** 1.7.15, 8:36 a.m. The grate is in the sun on 12th, in the shade on Howard.  Bright and shrouded, both.  This could be THE THING, or it could be nothing.  But it could also be something.  Just a little something.  I would like that too. I blur my vision, although it’s trickier with glasses.  7 years in, it still feels strange to discern faraway edges.  I’m still overwhelmed by the crisp, unrelenting details.  I still study people on public transportation too closely, making up their stories as if they don’t also enjoy the luxury, or liability, of clear eyesight.   *** 1.8.15, 8:42 a.m. After work, I rode my bike around and through China Basin, and along clotted back streets, to the Dogpatch to meet Susan and Amanda.  The Bay Bridge lights flickered, lavender sunset edged the water, salt punctuated the mist.  Later, I trudged to the top of Potrero for dinner with Michelle and then drinks at the hilltop dive, served by Nigel, the Aussie ex-journalist who drank Herradura all night and tried to tempt us into the same.  Photographs from his 50th birthday party lined the frames of even older images on the wall across from the bar.  He looked much better now than in his 20s, but with a withered accent and defeated attention span.  Michelle and I told him we’ve lived in Oakland and San Francisco 13 years and 10 years, respectively, and he brushed off those bundles of years with his own accumulation – 24 years, citizenship attained, missed Sydney, but here was home now. I made it back down the hill, icy wind in my ears, to chicken soup cooling in a huge pot in the refrigerator, a bundle of parsley in a glass jar atop a thick cutting board on the kitchen counter.  Heat on, apartment warm with weeknight, Josh asleep.  I’m tipsy, a bad girl, a bad bard.  The sublime has already walked toward and through me, but I can no longer register it in this town submerged in it, coated in it - where business has already been told, wrecks hoisted to the surface.  After a night between sea level and atop a coveted city, home makes the most sense. *** 1.9.15, 8:36 a.m. The chill backed off this morning to allow a softer afternoon than the faceted and gem–brilliant days between Christmas and the New Year. The 101 overpass is one block away.  The city merges and takes off near this point – above and whipping forth from paved loops to board fast roads out of town. *** 1.10.15, 4:40 pm Saturday’s languor waters the sky.  Egg white clouds puff and striate.  Folks walk between home or sightseeing to happy hours, jobs, dinner, custody hand-offs.  This time of day is full of possibility.  Which way will the night turn? *** 1.11.15, 1:40 p.m. The Gaslamp, the cafe that shares the corner with the grate, is sparsely but regularly populated.  It provides a bland, quiet respite. Yesterday morning, Josh and I walked up to Corona Heights Park, where the expansive views of the city and the Bay are stunning and the thought of everyone stacked on top of one another stuns.  I experience a different type of claustrophobia - or perhaps the opposite of claustrophobia, unnerved by so much space - when looking at satellite maps of the coastal section of Massachusetts where I grew up.  The ocean is undeniable, particularly summer’s daily saltwater baptisms.  June’s ebullience, July’s perfect pitch, August’s happy exhaustion, September’s relief: seasonal shifts are the culture on offer. In San Francisco, I struggle to remember times of year during which certain events took place.  The lack of classic seasons scrambles the connection between experience and month.  The past week has been fantastically cold for the area - low 40s, even some frost at night.  That time, marked by particular weather, grooves in the brain.  I will remember it - bundling up, worrying about wet hair and recalling my elementary school yard.  In the winter, my morning damp hair would freeze solid as we waited to be let inside the building.  I remember the great relief of classroom heat softening my glacial locks.