Paradigm Shift - Part II

I have never been what you might call "beautiful."

While generally average in appearance — and perhaps "cute" on some scales — I'm what the giants of our society might refer to as "vertically challenged," barely hitting the 5'4 mark on most charts.

Factor in my lack of interest in high heels and my ability to go days without a proper shower and make-up (if I'm camping), and I'm far from elegant, to boot. And since elegance, for a woman, is so often tied to beauty...

I'm once again at a loss.

And yet: just feet away from my gym is one of two grocery stores I frequent, picking up ingredients for those rare nights spent cooking at home. One evening after a particularly vicious workout, I spun through the rotating doors of that chain grocery store not once, but twice, my dual spin anything but an accident.

You see, some clever patron had managed to wedge a peculiar sticker on the wall just beyond the door. How they did this without losing their fingers is beyond me, but I appreciate their efforts all the same.

I mean: what I saw made me smile, a feat that's rarely been accomplished these past few months.

And so I resolved to revisit that scene with my camera, each day pulling into the gym parking lot and thinking: later, maybe later.

Until weeks had passed, and I was sick with the fear that I had missed my window of opportunity.

But I had not, as evidenced by my eventual arrival there, with my camera in tow.

I stopped the rotating door mid-spin, rested my arm against the lever, and snapped the shutter any number of times, realizing all the while that no photograph can replace the actual experience of stumbling onto such a find in that split second between the outside, and the in.

And just as there is no substitute for the experience, I realize now — weeks since I took these photographs (I'd been waiting for the proper words to post them) — that no number of randomly placed urban artifacts...

...and no matter how many times I spin through those doors....

That sometimes it's impossible to believe anything about yourself until you hear someone else speak the words, earnestly and only,

to you.

But right now: everything is quiet. Too quiet, in fact, with a corporate fan circulating a hum of fiscally-sound air — my only solace over the dull sting of tinnitus.