everything feeds process

Today was a glorious day. Post surgery, my life has been limited to my condo, my office, and a few brief trips to the movie theater or a local store or restaurant.  With the amount of ice and snow outdoors, I’ve been afraid of slipping on my crutches and falling. In other words, my world has diminished in size, considerably.

Today, my lovely husband offered to push me in a wheelchair around the Mall of America. I would never have been able to crutch around the full mall, since it is ginormous.  He knew I needed to get out and for five little dollars and a lot of muscle power on his part, we had an adventure.

In my regular non-surgery life, I love the mall. I know malls may seem anathema to poetry, but I find them to be inspiring. There are wonderful people-watching opportunities at malls, from families with children to young couples and tourists. Malls are paragons to our most base desires – intimacy, food,entertainment, status.  They are superficially slick and deeply dysfunctional. To me, they represent everything that is beautiful and awful about our country.

It was by far my most photogenic day and not just because of the change of scenery.  By touring the mall in a wheelchair, I got a whole new perspective.  I had a better vantage from which to observe people and the people were nicer to me than normal.  The products were closer.  The glittering store fronts whizzed past me, since my husband decided that the wheelchair gave us the option to mow down other shoppers.

The pictures, from top to bottom, display a Minnesota-themed jewelry shop, the incredibly creepy Build-a-Bear store, a self-portrait, a caramel corn display, a Fluffie (TM) Throw display, and a sculpture display. The last four were all taken at my husband’s favorite store, Marshalls. The sculpture display was taken by my husband, since they were hung far above my head. I never would have seen them and it is my favorite picture of the day.

Now that I’m at the end of my Week in the Life, I am so glad that I turned this into a seasonal project. Even with the ups and downs of my schedule, it felt good and right to mark time through taking pictures.  Especially on a busy week like this, I’ve needed the space to reflect and write, even if it’s just to write about the minutiae of my day.

I can’t wait to see what my spring looks like.

During the first week of school, I barely have time to eat lunch and go the restroom on a regular timetable.  Adding photography to the mix  (and then blogging about that photography) has been a challenge, to say the least. I was doing fine until Friday, when classes officially started for the majority of our students.  For the most of the day on Friday, I was assisting students, training our new administrative assistant, and answering panicky emails.  I also got to sub for a literature instructor who was ill and teach 1 hour of African-American literature.  (Oh, how I miss teaching sometimes.)

None of these things are photogenic.  What was photogenic was the beginning of my day, when I was able to snap a few pictures in the coffee shop across from my office. A colleague was running late to the meeting, so I took the opportunity to photograph the salt and pepper shakers, as well as my crutches leaning against the wall. I’ve been trying to get good crutch pictures all week, since they are the mainstay of my life, and this is the first one that I feel is decent.