I've been concerned that I don't get enough exercise during the weekdays, so I determined to go to the Spring Creek Forest Preserve down the street from my office to take a half an hour's walk during lunchtime. The woods were all hardwood, so the trees were bare and scraggly. But as I strolled along the trail, I saw dozens of robins--very orange/red breasted, very fat and well fed. They hopped, they flitted, they flew. It was like one of those Italian movies in which the robins symbolize something important, only, as when I view an Italian movie, I am never sure what the robins symbolize.
I remember when they put the metal "point" on the skyscraper in downtown Dallas a decade or more ago. The helicopter lowered this steeple-like point atop the tall building. It was just like in a Fellini film, but in fact it symbolized nothing more than perhaps a bit of corporate and architectural excess.
I tend to see life as metaphor, but so often the metaphor eludes me, and all I have before me is an image that it passes so quickly, and there is so much I do not understand.
