The Upside of the Dark Side

When it's 100 degrees out, you get a whole new perspective on light and dark -- traditional Judeo-Christian associations dissolve into a kind of Yin Worship. The bright, cheerful sun becomes an oppressive & dangerous force. Shadows stop being scary or grim, and are instead restorative spaces, highly coveted.

Some people carry their own shade with them -- I've seen any number of umbrellas moonlighting as parasols this week, and on Tuesday I spotted a guy coasting down Rainier on a bike, holding a beach towel aloft in both hands so it billowed out behind him, creating a shady cave for his head.

The less foresighted (and more cautious) among us have had to hone our shadow-seeking abilities: we crowd our chairs around the shady end of the picnic table, and hold out for that parking space under the tree, and line up in the shadow of the utility pole when we're waiting for the light to change. Our friend Edna brought her considerable panache to this last technique the other evening outside Geraldine's: leaning casually against the streetlamp, open book in one hand, cigarette in the other, her beanpole body lined up precisely with the narrow band of shadow so that only her ponytail caught the sun's rays.

This new-found shadow obsession may explain my experience on Friday, when the extreme heat had broken and we were back to what felt like relatively reasonable 85-degree summer days. I went out to Bellevue to do some research for a grant I'm writing, and to take some pictures of piece of public art in Bellevue's Downtown Park: a stripe of concrete in the grass that marches along in a series of right angles, outlining a mysterious, irregular shape.


Because the shape is level and the rest of the lawn is not, the stripe becomes a sitting wall in places.


An unobtrusive plaque explains that a series of school buildings once stood here -- presumably this installation recreates their footprints.

Because the piece is so big, and so flat, I kept trying to get above it to photograph it. (The satellite view may be the way to go.) First I clambered on top of a nearby WWI memorial -- sorry, soldiers, no disrespect meant -- then I tried balancing barefoot on one of those round-topped newel posts, holding the camera up over my head as high as I could reach, and aiming it down at the lawn. Which is how I wound up with about five pictures like this:


A portrait of my dark side, maybe?