A small piece of a larger puzzle

Forgotten in the sun
London, ON
October 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I'm pretty sure no one else has ever taken a photo of this particular piece of siding tucked inside a downtown #LdnONT alleyway. Not deliberately, or consciously, anyway.

Why would they? What's the point of shooting a bashed-in piece of metal that, to be frank, wasn't much to look at before it was bashed in. It's not terribly unique. Or pretty. Never was. Never will be, in any context.

And yet, here I find myself on a sunny lunchtime walk, standing in the alleyway between a barber and a burger joint, staring at it as if it has an intrinsic value that no one else recognized. After sizing it up for a couple of minutes, I conclude it doesn't. It's as meh as it looks.

But it's still part of the fabric of this place. Still a small, all-too-easily-ignored piece of a larger, not-always-desirable - yet still intriguing and integral - puzzle that is my downtown neighborhood. So many of us live and/or work in this admittedly imperfect place, but I doubt many of us slow ourselves down long enough to soak in details like this one.

And if we're not seeing the little puzzle pieces, can we truly appreciate the overall puzzle? What are we missing if we don't peek into the forgotten corners of the places where we live?

Maybe we don't want to know. But I'm guessing we need to.

#london #ontario #canada #downtown #urban #city #dundas #street #monochrome #photography #streetphotography #alley #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything