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Just Shelley Photography

Drops of water

The weather’s been warm and we’ve been keeping the windows open to catch the cool night air. Its odd to sit here typing at the computer with all the windows open and the fan going, listening to the rain, when a scant 100 miles away people are facing snow and ice.

St. Louis lives in that kind of space – suits me.

Last night I was in the kitchen getting some water when I heard a loud plane overhead. This isn’t that unusual, we get planes from time to time from a nearby airport. However, this sound wasn’t going away, and shook the walls. Invasion? Crash? Really lost pilot? Something I should perhaps be concerned about?

I went out on the porch and in the clear night I could see a series of Air Force transport planes flying overhead – aligned one after the other, with red beacon lights shining like tiny beads strung in a necklace. Another joined the thread as I stood and watched.

Odd how things look different when the distance changes. I know the planes are huge, they have to be from the sound. However, high overhead they’re barely more than dots wrapping a thread around the moon. But look at the following photograph, taken of a rock that’s smaller than a dime. The closeness of the camera and the action of the lens enhance and enlarge details too small to view with the naked eye.

Remember when you were a kid how you would dip your finger into a glass of water and use it to ‘paint’ pictures on the table; or you would place drops of water over writing or the tablecloth and see how the drops would magnify whatever was underneath?

I always liked looking at cloth under the drops; seeing the individual threads emerge distinct from the whole, until the drops soaked into the cloth and the effect was lost.

For some reason I was reminded of this magnifying effect of water last night, when I watched the transport ships with their tiny red lights and huge sound and faraway destinations where I imagine they fly with their running lights off. Just in case.

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