"A World Not of This World"

Some magic and meaning in a plane of light

Shiny Things. Manhattan, NY (2018).

I recently rediscovered the photograph above in my files. I haven’t looked at it in a while. It’s from 2018, made from the sidewalk looking at the plate glass windows of Economy Candy in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

I have always found it fascinating. There’s so much going on, what with the faces, the colorful candy, the reflections of people holding things, and more. At the time, I gave it the title, “Shiny Things.”

I’m hesitant to explain too much here, but as I look at it today I sense something more.

Even in the simplest and most fleeting of moments, there can be magic and mystery in the world.

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The first time I remember anyone making me aware of this fact was in freshman English at UNC. The instructor was Karen English, a young doctoral student who had successfully defended her thesis that fall semester thereby becoming “Doctor English.” She had received a round of cheers from our class on the day she announced her accomplishment to us. 

All semester, she stretched our developing brains, and one afternoon we were discussing Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man.” Dr. English pointed out the passage where the farm wife is sitting on the evening stoop talking softly with her husband in the moonlight. They are troubled about why their unreliable hired hand has returned to the farm.

“Part of a moon was falling down the west, 

Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills. 

Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw it

And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand 

Among the harp-like morning-glory strings, 

Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves, 

As if she played unheard some tenderness 

That wrought on him beside her in the night.”

— Robert Frost, excerpt from “The Death of the Hired Man.”

“That’s one of those moments that make you realize you’re alive,” Dr. English told us. “Some passing beauty that happens only then and there as she smooths her apron in her lap in the moonlight.”

On any other occasion, spreading an apron and touching the twine would likely be meaningless and unnoticed gestures. But on this particular night this softness and unheard tenderness is needed. The moonlight and the morning-glory strings are as much of the moment as anything else.

It’s a small lesson I still remember almost 45 years later.

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Here’s another literary example of light and magic that has stayed with me over time. 

In the opening passage of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country, translated by Edward G. Seidensitcker, the protagonist Shimamura is on a passenger train winding into the snowy mountains of northern Japan. Deep winter darkness is descending. A young woman sits across the aisle from him within the lighted railcar, and Shimamura is fascinated by her reflection that he sees in the window on his side of the train. She is caring for an older man. He watches them in secret, and he is transported, not only by her presence, but also by the moment. Her face and movements are framed by the landscape passing on the outside the window creating a moving picture of sorts…

“The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted together into a sort of symbolic world not of this world.”

— from Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata

The ephemeral scene sets the extraordinary mood and the direction for the rest of the novel. Many things become one in an instance of transient beauty, noticed only by Shimamura, then and only then. A small moment of meaning in an otherwise mundane scene.

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In 2016, I was in Mexico City on a trip for school. I had spent the first part of the day roaming the expansive city meeting with contacts. But as the evening rush hour developed and deepened, I was feeling far from home. An extra long “accordion”commuter bus pulled up beside me.

I was struck immediately by the face of a young woman standing close to the middle door, framed within the window. She seemed to be the only person on the enormous bus, at least the only one I could see. Her bright red lips were noticeable in the gray glass. She was looking beyond me. I pulled my camera from my backpack and grabbed two quick photos before the bus moved away. 

It was only after I had downloaded the picture and looked at it closely that something struck me.

In the glass was a reflection of some trees. They were in front of her. They were behind me. But they were also present in the glass at the same time, forming a green garland around her, behind her, in front of me. Figures and background melting together into a “world not of this world.” An ephemeral instance existing only in that plane of light, only at that time and place. Those trees were as much of the moment as the window glass, her face, her red lips. It was a gift. A small moment of meaning, and a reminder of why I make photos.

Between Seeing and Knowing. Mexico City, 2016.