Interpretation

I took this picture in my back yard last week. I was trying to capture the leaves that are ever so slightly turning, and the water. Around here, we have green leaves one day, then we have a day or two of color, then we get a nor'easter and the leaves are blown entirely off. The End. The colors of fall don't last long at all.

I took a class called Cinema as an Art Form in college. Middle Sister and I went to the same college, and she convinced me to take this class as an elective for what ought to have been a very easy A. All we had to do was watch a movie each week and analyze it to death. This was right up my scholarly alley.

Students in the Engineering School or the Commerce School made fun of us Arts and Sciences types who wasted time in classes such as underwater basket-weaving and cinema. (I was heavy on the arts and not so much on the sciences, math, accounting, astronomy, statistics, all other topics, attending classes on time, if at all, etc.)

Just like interpreting art or poetry or a story or a book or a situation or a Whatever, interpreting a movie is really very subjective. As long as you can brainstorm a few good ideas and understand the subtlety of what goes on in the background (color, symbolism, etc), you earned your A in the class.

Middle Sis didn't get her Easy A because she and I are wired differently (where differently is she's a genius who is very literal, and I just make stuff up, spew it forth and call it a day). I hardly even attended all the movies and I still got the Easy A because I can look at or read something and interpret it a million different ways.

Please don't ask me to make a decision, though. Or do anything else, especially if it is something productive.

There are endless ways I'd interpret this photo above. I encourage you to add to the list below. I love other perspectives and it's also a good creative exercise for the brain. These days, that's the only exercise I'm gettin'.

Possibilities....

1. Take a view through the telescope of nature. The weeds below and the tree branches above form a circle which serves as the lens to view the water.

2. In the midst of what seems ordinary (leaves, water, grass), there may be beauty that others do not see until it is pointed out. Your day-to-day life may seem boring, but if you stop to really look and appreciate what is around you, it's anything but ordinary. Beauty can be found everywhere.

3. It represents the circle of life and the unity of all living things.

4. It's a bold statement, and that statement is this: Chesapeake Bay Woman hasn't mowed her shoreline with the push mower at all this grass-cutting season, which lasts forever around here. The shoreline weeds have grown so high she couldn't cut a path through there with a back-hoe.

What are your interpretations?