Go And Open The Door

The title of this blip is the first line of a wonderfully transparent poem, 'The Door' by Miroslav Holub. It is also the poem's refrain, repeated to usher in a number of simple images: "a tree", "a garden", "a magic city", "the picture of a picture", etc. The poem ends with the command:

"Go and open the door.

At least
there'll be
a draught."

Rather than a magic city, what we have here is a magic door; a beautiful door anyway, with blue and red stained glass panels, presumably early Victorian.

Yes, I've been wandering around the recently vacated flat above ours once again. I remember this door from my childhood; I grew up with it in a sense.

I took quite a few shots, of the glass reflecting the window, or looking the other way, at a kind of Dutch interior with a dark staircase. Then I went back again later in the afternoon and composed a few 'abstract' shots, like the one above. I am still not sure this is making the best use of the door; in a way it is too abstract, too un-door-like. But I think it's the best I have for now. Initially, I couldn't decide between this shot and this one, a self portrait in profile.

Later in the day I pulled up beside the circus which made camp in a local field. Perhaps foolishly, I asked for permission to take some shots of the tigers in their cages and the various performers in or near their caravans, or anything unusual really (like this one, which I had already taken, of llamas being led into the tent by a back way) .

Of course permission was refused, politely enough. Apparently they get dozens of requests every week, and have had enough of it. But the patch where I was allowed to photograph was pretty dull, the only person being this man, asleep in his car.