Like the Sky, Like the Sea

Ah, blue. Such wonderful associations. This is a calm picture, a picture for a quiet day at home, taking advantage of every little bit of serenity.

It makes me happy just thinking about it.

I've tagged a bunch of Beirut Pursuit photos that show street lamps.  You can see that group of posts by clicking here. 

The Perfect Yellow

A few years ago I had paint chips propped up on the window ledge in my living room. All of them within a few shades of this:

I was looking for the perfect yellow, something like an orange tinged lemon or a really yellowy butter or an egg tart if you bumped up the saturation.

Live With It

Wires. In Beirut, you live with them. No getting around it. Might as well line them up, compose them as part of your image.

It's just that sometimes, I wish I didn't have to.

No Place

Oh, Beirut.

There's no place quite like it.

A Lot Going On

This is a photo that I unabashedly love and for so many reasons. It's full to bursting with lines pulled in every possible direction. We've got wires ascending and wires descending, they're hanging and swaying, snaking up the wall, falling back on themselves, draping, cascading, bunching here, stretching there. And then there's the radiant mid-day sun casting hard-edged shadows everywhere.

And then there's how typical all of this is here in Beirut. The street light, the yellow electric pole, the generally French architecture of nearly every building from this era. It's a lovely, lovely thing.

Speckled Blue

I like the speckled blue tiles on the facade of this building.

The colors remind me of the sea.

At present I'm thousands of miles from Beirut, hundreds of miles from anything like the sea.  From this great distance all I have are my photos, and in them, Beirut looks crowded. I can't help smiling to myself, because Beirut is crowded.  I like it that way.

Framed

Lately, I've been very interested in Beirut's tiled facades. I like how the wires strung all around framed this view of yet another one that I recently found in Hamra.

I can't help feeling bemused and possibly amazed that tiles like this were once the hottest thing in architecture in Beirut.

Taken

Just above Bread Republic in Hamra, you'll see this:

I'm quite taken with all of this.  Tiny balconies, good for nothing except taking one single step forward into the fresh air, are never the less profoundly beautiful.  Shuttered doors leading out to that balcony make it that much better.  I love the flowers (or are they sheaves of wheat?) carved into the balcony's supports.  I've recently become interested in concrete balustrades but the strong geometry of this iron one is calling to me.  And the colors: the creamy, gray sort of beige and the steely blue combination stopped me in my tracks.  I love how the picture turned out, the light is exactly what I'd want it to be. And (this part surprised me), I'm growing fond of these typically-Beirut street lights.  I love that bold, black arc, like an open parenthesis over the whole image.

Late Afternoon

It's late afternoon and the setting sun shines down at just the right angle to light up a few wires strung across the street.

It only lasts a few moments and then it's gone. And it makes me smile to think that it'll be back again tomorrow.

Start Seeing

The world is a big, complicated, chaotic place where a million things happen, change, or simply exist all at once. You can't possibly notice everything, all the details. That's why sometimes it feels like things that have been there all along begin to exist when you first think to notice them.

That's what has happened for me as I've gone around looking for tiled buildings in Beirut.

Looking for them, as a process, has pulled them from the negative space of my life.  They jump out at me now and demand my consideration, my acknowledgment of them as a genre in the context of all that is Beirut.

Dotted

I think these tiles are quite cute. I like the dotted look, and it makes me wonder if living in a building with a blue, dotty exterior would change a person. If they're happy living there, would it make them grow fonder of blue?

Would it do that to me, to you?

Sun-dried

I grew up in a culture that placed great value on its tumble driers.

Here in Beirut, though, it's all about solar and I love it. I persist in the belief that there's no better smell anywhere in the whole world than the scent of freshly line-dried-in-Beirut laundry.

Quiet Evening

I like how quiet this photo makes me feel.