Sometimes we forget that we don’t have to travel far from home to experience something beautiful. Perhaps we become too used to our surroundings to fully appreciate them and we start to take them granted. Perhaps we just never bothered to see them in the first place, assuming that the only things really worth noticing were always ‘somewhere else.’
This afternoon, I decided to take an Astoria Appreciation Walk and try to take some time to really notice and enjoy my neighborhood. It wasn’t that thorough of a walk, mind you. Nor was it to any parts of the neighborhood that I haven’t been to before. But this time, the sole purpose was to take a moment and actually notice. Notice the people. Notice the architecture. Notice the rhythm of everyday life and how the mundane can actually be beautiful if you actually see it instead of just looking at it.
I took my camera along with me, because I find if I have it in my hands it forces me to notice things even more, but unfortunately it ran out of batteries after I snapped a few pictures. And I even had a five minute debate with myself before leaving the house as to whether or not I should put a fresh set of batteries in it. “Nah. I’m sure these ones are charged up pretty well.”
Lesson learned.
I did get a couple of nice pictures though.
The first one was just a random soda bottle bobbing in the East River. Sure, litter in the East River is pretty common, but this lonely bottle floating around looking for a place to wash ashore (perhaps with a message inside waiting to be read) was a small moment of beauty found along m way… which I then photoshopped the hell out of.
I think it must be a law on the books somewhere that if you go to Astoria Park, you’re required to take pictures of the bridges. I’m sure if you don’t, they cart you away somewhere and stick bamboo under your fingernails and torture you into submission. It’s just one of those obligatory pictures you’re required to take. Like when you Pisa. You are required to take one of those perspective picture that make it looks like you’re holding the Leaning Tower up so that it doesn’t topple over.
So, not wanting to risk the torture, I took some bridge pictures.
This one feature the Hell Gate Bridge in the front, the Triborough Bridge (now officially named the Robert F Kennedy Bridge, though it will always be the Triborough to me) further back, and the skyline of Manhattan in the background.
At the base of the Hell Gate bridge I found a man playing fetch with his dog. Except he was throwing the stick into the river for the dog to swim out to and retrieve. I would never send my beloved animal companion into the cesspool known as the East River, but to each his own. Here’s a shot of the dog (center of the frame) leaping into the river to fetch the stick… and a plethora of diseases.
And that’s when my batteries died. I still had my iPhone with me though, and my obsession with taking panoramic pictures with it hasn’t died yet, so I positioned myself for a nice panoramic picture of the two bridges spanning the river.
Perhaps the most beautiful part of my Astoria Appreciation Walk was that Mother Nature waited until five minutes after I returned home to start raining. Thanks, Ma!
In closing, I encourage you to spend an afternoon exploring your own backyard and neighborhood and find the beauty you never noticed before.