september's theme: close to you, explained.

Today's picture came out of a fairly disturbing event that has come close to happening to me a few times in the past and will probably happen again. I was taking a picture (which turned out well, btw) outside of an apartment building (picture of a tree and a barbecue grill, not of the building), and someone (probably the owner) came out and did his best to harass me and make me feel uncomfortable (quite successfully).

It was pretty clear that he thought I was taking pictures with some (probably sinister) motive, but that's not an excuse for how he acted (I was being nice, btw, except for the parts where I was freaking out and leaving - and I still wasn't being rude or mean). He was so off the chart that I think he may have been mentally ill in some way, because it's hard to imagine someone being so mean-spirited to a random stranger without being crazy.

Anyway moving on, I rode away, planning to half-heartedly continue riding around town and taking pictures, and took the next one I had planned, then spent a minute or two standing at a stop sign thinking. Eventually I rode across the street to a nice bench that was very close to this tree...which I looked at in a slightly different way than I had before.

This is the first day of September that I've posted, so this entry goes up only a few hours after the day ended. So I've chosen today to start a feature that I'll see how long I can keep up: September Close To You youtube selections!

The first one is the obvious classic, by The Carpenters.