5 October 2018 – These people are oblivious …
to the whole busy other world going right here next to them, all around Norman’s Fruit & Salad market .
They’re put to shame by these Plum Birds, who are so observant they’re practically falling off their wire.
See? It’s a world of activity, all stretched out, right beneath those bright beady eyes …
layer on layer.
All quite fanciful, too, with a certain ornithological flair.
That’s a cardinal on her head, I like to think, and on his finger, oh, let’s call it a cockatoo. (The rare crestless variant.)
Perhaps distracted by the wine, they are oblivious to the scrutiny from above.
Up there, an observant trio, who watch what’s happening below …
despite their own distractions of book, apples and, I’m willing to guess, a daffodil. (Clearly they are not the least bit distracted by untied shoe laces.)
Beside them, a second trio, the sleeping cat nicely counterbalanced by two watchful crows.
Beside them, yet another trio. A trio of trios! This time it’s a sad clown, a perhaps-concerned crow and, underneath, an I-have-my-own-problems sad civilian.
I confess. This is not where I began. Not what first switched me from oblivious to observant.
I was hiking right along at that street corner, when the young Joe Stalin caught my attention.
There he was, back from the dead to glower over a box of cabbages.
It took me a long while to notice the — what? Benedictine monk? — reading his breviary in the background.
What I noticed next was the bad-tempered cat, there at young Joe’s feet, giving that Plum Bird on the pole a hard time.
Or, perhaps, Joe & the cat are just ticked at whoever scrawled all over them.
Street artists should respect existing street art, right?
