Tuesday, October 21, 2008

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?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

It represents a place that I would like to visit soon. I'll bring wine and cheese; heck, I'll even bring my own chair:) Do you think Grandma J would bring the shirtless entertainment??

BTW - Friday is ON! 5:00, right?

Annie said...

Well, I'd kind of like to know where that river is going..around that bend..and what is over there under those tress...and is the grass really greener on the other side of the river? And could I swim across, and all of that?
Annie

ps How envy-able (is that a word, and is that how you spell it) to have a river at the end of your back yard! I have a river too, but it is at the end of the street!

Anonymous said...

I see a Christmas Decoration of my Mother's future (left upper portion of photo) dangling over a tiny opening of beautiful water. The water is enclosed by the marsh which is the scene of a previous accident....one in which CBW drove CBMiddle Sis into the shoreline "wide-open" while horseplaying in a fan boat that CBFather somehow had acquired. It appears that the beauty of the water is minimized by the stragulation of these forms of vegetation. In reality, this is just because of the camera angle and the Christmas decoration is nowhere near the water. (This is how I would have answered a question in cinema as an art form.)

I wish I could find my essays from Cinema as an Art form! What a class....and I think I ended up with a C or something like that. The whole strategy of taking an easy class seemed to backfire on me. I'm just not a creative interpreter of art. Ha!

-Middle Sis

Bayman said...

I thought it was "Cinema as a ANT FARM." Nevermind

Unknown said...

I could let my imagination run wild, but I won't.

It's a fiddler crab sanctuary

abb said...

I'd say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. You see weeds that need mowing. I see a perfect frame for the water. And won't a good freeze reduce the need for a back hoe?

Val said...

the scene represents continuity - the leafy circle the cycle of life - leaves turning from green to red, then green leaves appearing again; the river of life flowing through the centre of the scene; this life, and the next represented as river banks on either side visible to both but running parallel....
hows that?

Bear Naked said...

I see this as a straightening of CBW's middle finger saying my view is way better than Bear's view.
Nah nee nah nee nah nah!!!


Bear((( )))
(pardon me while I silently weep)

Mental P Mama said...

I have Virginia Envy. 5 on Friday? What's this? I am interpreting it as a fun time in the making.

Chesapeake Bay Woman said...

BHE-You're welcome to come here and visit any time you want. So far so good re Friday - I'll be in touch.

Annie-Thought-provoking questions....the answer to where this creek goes is that ultimately, in a round about way, it leads to the bay.

Middle Sis, Bayman and Grandma J. -I'm busting a gut laughing. At the air boat incident (I will be writing about that one, Sis), the ant farm (my house resembles that remark) and the fiddler crab sanctuary. Hilarious.

TSAnnie-Good interpretation. And yep, one good freeze and one good fire will take care of the weeds. We really love fires around here.

Val - You win first prize for your interpretation. Don't ask me what the prize is, but you won.

BN - I would never taunt a person like you who dreams of a restaurant where the waiters are mimes...oops, I think I just did.

MPM - Come on down. Be there or be square. A CBW and BHE meeting is in the works - I have to attend a soccer tournament in her neck of the woods.

Anonymous said...

I see a riparian buffer, definitely not un-mown weeds.

AMNRITSOR
anonymous Mathews Native....

Unknown said...

I am not good at this stuff. When I see that picture I see the water and I remember that Kaishon asked me if I could please take him to an indoor swimming pool this week because he wants to be a "merman" And then I think I really must call the YMCA and see if they have an open swim time and see if Kaishon can go. And then I think that I might not have money for said swim time because funds are running low. And then I have a headache : ) and now I am going to bed.

Karen Deborah said...

no mowing may mean that an infestations of some kind of critter is in your near future, or rear mirror. Your were askin about predictions right?

Anonymous said...

Well, I see the former scene of "the airboat incidents" that involved YOUNGER SIBLINGS battling blades gargling in the weeds, the sound of death howls, mud being slung around, geese flying away for dear life, fiddler crabs ready to attack with one claw proudly raised in the air,aaaaannnnd oldest sibling walking away from the scene....ahhh, the memories.
Love,
Baby sis

foolery said...

I see alleeeegators hidin' in there.

Well, maybe not. But snakes at the very least.