The bloom came off the rose a little today. Is that the right saying when you lose a little bit of enthusiasm for something you couldn't get enough of? Like when the honeymoon is over. When the third date is past. (that's a joke, sort of!) When the probation period of your job is over. Or after 3 months of dragging yourself out of bed at 6:00 am on Saturday mornings so you could go to the Salt Spring Market and attempt to make a whopping $65 on your best day selling photographs.
The anticipation was over the top from vendors. The World is coming. The World is coming. It felt a bit like the sky is falling. People came out of the woodwork. People who don't even normally show up but must have accumulated 9 years worth of points from previous market attendance were there. The end result? Mutiny on the grass.
When all the spots filled up and there was still a crowd of vendors hoping to get a spot some people, desperate and disrespectful people I might editorialize, took it upon themselves to think rules, what rules, and set up their tents, booths, etc. wherever they felt they could.
When Karin and I decided that we would rather not be there with that kind of energy, and I returned for a little something for breakfast, one RCMP, one CRD by-law enforcement officer and infamous Driftwood photographer Derrick Lundy was trying to cajole them to stand back to back for a photo op.
Somehow, the magic associated with the market that I've held all these years as a tourist was shot to hell today in less than a couple of hours.
And, if that wasn't enough, when I was walking along the sidewalk after my breakfast, some guy's dog backed up out of the bushes and while taking a shit (the dog, not the guy) managed to get some of the last remnants on my left shoe. I was just about to lose it when the guy looking at his dog said, "Hey buddy, are you okay?" Is the friggin dog okay? What about my god damned shoe? It's a good thing these aren't Manolo Blahniks or he would have had one angry red head to contend with and we wouldn't want that would we? But, I said nothing. How could I get upset? The guy didn't even notice that some of his dog's crap hit my shoe and after the fact, I did see the humour in it.
Welcome to a little Gulf Island paradise! (And it isn't even truly summer yet really!) What hell will break loose in August? I spent the late afternoon having a nap recovering from all the excitement.
Moving on to a more positive note, what today did allow me to do is walk around and see what else is being sold out there and you know what I discovered even more than I already suspected? Everyone and their diahrrea-infected dog is selling some sort of photos. I just figured that out. Now, I have faith that my photos are good but so are quite a few (read a thousand or so) other people's. Go figure?
So, after all that, I headed over to ArtSpring to check out the Photo Lumiere exhibit and really enjoyed the "seeing" of six island professional photographers: Eric Onasick, Janet Dwyer, Gillean Proctor, Steven Friedman, Birgit Freybe Bateman and Osman Phillips.
Nothing I could say to describe their individual seeing would sound anything but trite in comparison to their images and now I have to try and say something intelligent and insightful about that for an article just to top off all the "fun" this weekend.
Luckily Charles is having a party tonight and I'm late...