NZ Visual Diary - entry 301

patina and petals on old valve

Meshugaas (also spelled mishegaas) is a wonderful Yiddish word for craziness. I suspect that we all feel there’s too much meshugaas in the world today.

But I have a tonic, a remedy to help relieve the stress engendered by the experience of meshugaas overload. My guaranteed cure: go for a walk embracing an attitude of childlike wonder. Permit me to explain.

Take a stroll but see the world anew, with childlike wonder, such that the most mundane objects take on preternatural appearances.

In a word: gaze in awe.

And so the other day I took my own advice. As I walked about Wynyard Quarter, I stumbled upon an old corroded valve, a relic from my precinct’s past industrial character. Rather than walk by without giving the valve proper notice, I inspected it closely.

The valve had been oxidised over the years transforming it, as if by process of alchemical transmutation, from a mundane implement to a wondrous art object bejewelled with a vivid patina and petalled forms.

I stood in awe . . . and then captured a photograph. My photographic buddies of purist persuasion may forgive my use of colour over-saturation and heightened contrast to accentuate the jewel-like qualities of the oxidised metal.