Oracles of the Secular World

You'll see a lot of these as this blog continues--things that stop me, that seem to have a spirit, that I can stand in front of a long time, until I lose my concentration or feel that the kind and indulgent person waiting in the car may soon lose her patience.

I call these secular oracles, because they seem to be trying to tell me something. Or I want them to tell me something, but their power is only an illusion that, if I am lucky, I can perhaps encapsulate in a photograph.

This particular oracle is an industrial kitchen vent outside a defunct Chinese or Polynesian restaurant on either the White Horse or the Black Horse Pike leading into Atlantic City.

I have a series of pictures on my own photo site, ericlevin.net, that I call Souls Have Shapes, which is another kind of title for these same kind of pictures--of things seen bluntly, with a wonder at their strangeness and spirit when for a moment we forget their context and purpose.

The title Souls Have Shapes comes from the beginning of a poem by the late Stanley Kunitz called "My Sisters":..

"Who whispered, souls have shapes?

So has the wind, I say,

But I don't know,

I only feel things blow."

[By the way, the two older sisters Kunitz referred to in this poem died very young]

Here's a line worth quoting
from Kunitz's obituary....

In an interview in The New York Times
last year, he said he had become
reconciled to death and gave
little thought to his legacy.
"Immortality?" he said, "It's
not anything I'd lose sleep over."

Tags: Atlantic City | photography