God Is In The Details Or Brad Loves Bugs Or Flower Porn

Photo by Brad Ewell

Someone got a macro lens and is seeing the world--bugs and flying creatures you might tend to swat–like a person deeply in love. Maybe not like a person. As a person. I remember my writing teacher Ehud Havazelet teaching us how Flaubert got us to fall in love with the potentially unlikable Madame Bovary by bringing her so close to us in his descriptions we were, like a person in love (as a person in love), focusing on the way her hair was tucked behind her ear. (If I have that detail wrong, oh well. I loved Ehud to much that often I paid more attention to how what he was saying made me feel than to the words themselves.)

I have no idea what is going on in this photo. It looks to me like the flower is licking the bug's back. I should google the difference between bug and insect, but I don't feel like it. The point is that I'm writing about a picture I don't understand. I see part of a flower, half of Bono's sunglasses, and the bug's wings.

I have no idea to whom that tongue belongs to.

I think Brad is messing with me. He's a cop who plays with (I mean works with) explosives and guns for a living, so how he sees the world and how I see it may be so radically different that this photo makes perfect sense to him. While he's considering what life he's going to save next, I'm wondering what's on sale at Whole Foods today.

Remember when you were a kid and you got your first magnifying glass? Remember the thrill and terror of seeing just how long the hairs on your arms were and just how massive and complicated ants were?

I spend so much of my day on my phone, that little square of distraction. What can I see when I look at it?

Sometimes I wish Brad would come over and blow it up.

Thanks for a week-plus sending me photos, Brad, so I could create posts around them. That was so fun.