Aging Lantern
Passing through Tokyo the other day, wandering around in the usual fugue, in transit from Saigon back to Seattle with a long layover, I came across this somewhat sad, aging symbol of Japan.
Maybe that’s too strong a description. Maybe it looked like a cosmic satellite torn apart by radiation. Maybe I liked the equally aged pink pipe, or the Chinese yellow at the bottom. Something grabbed me and I took the picture. Later, when going through my snapshots from the day, I almost deleted it. Then I remembered an admonition from my cousin George, who remains my photography guru: “Never delete anything. It’s just data bits.” So I kept it. Then I saw it again later and it grabbed me again. So I was glad I kept it. Now I want to go back to Tokyo to see if the lantern is still there, how it is doing, whether it survived the hot summer. Will my fellow traveler still be around?
out-takes: minutes before and after
