The hated fountain

Frozen in time and space
Laval, QC
June 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

A couple of years ago, we pulled up to the visitors' parking lot of my father-in-law's condo building and noticed a new addition: A fountain. At the time I saw it as a wasteful extravagance, an unnecessary expense incurred by an administration that had long ignored the basic upkeep needs of a 40-plus-year-old building.

I still feel that way, because no one wakes up and says, "Gee, let's spend five figures on a new fountain," when the parking structure has been sprouting sinkholes large enough to devour a Jeep. Priorities, people. Clearly, these folks have none.

But on this morning, I needed to block the real world out of my head for a few minutes. Sitting in an apartment for shivah, listening to the sometimes-inane comments of usually well-meaning people, had made me a little jumpy. I needed to get outside.

I've played with dancing waters before*, largely because there's no plan, no expectation. You immerse yourself in the mechanics of the thing - camera settings, composition, lighting, not getting smacked by passing cars, whatever - and then cross your fingers that the forces of physics decide to cooperate. Sometimes you come back with something decent. Sometimes you don't.

Today was a decent day. The light cooperated. So did the gardeners who decided to mow somewhere else when they saw me approach, and the ducks who quacked at me loudly before skittering into the adjacent river. I spent six minutes shooting, managed to smile for the first time in a while.

The fountain still sucks, as do the idiots who put it there. The orange traffic cone filling the gigantic pothole beside my parking spot is a constant reminder that the people running this place have no clue.

But I'm good with setting practicality aside every once in a while if it means you get to feel somewhat normal before the real world intrudes once more. Not everything needs to be perfectly rational. Sometimes you just need to get outside and wing it.

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* Here, here, here, and here.