rainbow

Rainbow Parade - Accidental Encounters

The streets are often surprising. They catch us off guard, from the back when we are looking ahead: they fill our eyes with colors, when all we can see is monochrome dullness; they fill out ears with the sounds of joy and Madonna, when all we want to listen to is Scriabin or Prokofiev; they clear our breathing passages with the smell of strong smell of “Angel”, when all we want is the clarity of spearmint. And that’s why I love the streets! You can’t get mad at them about anything. They are there for you when you need them even when you don’t realize you do.

I started the day quite bored and ready to sit in front of the computer watching mindlessly movie after movie when I decided to take a walk. And ended up all of a sudden in the middle of a Love Parade. And the next 3-4 hours were spent walking around the crowds of people – people who did not know when to stop, who didn’t know why they should ever stop, people who knew what to smile for, people who knew that if you wear red trousers, there is no way your day to be bad. People who knew that PDA (public display of affection) is in fact beautiful – even if the individual persons aren’t particularly so. And so they did, undisturbed by the journalists taking their picture in an arrogantly intrusive way sticking their big Canons and lenses literally in their faces. Where is the boundary between being one of the crowd and being one in the crowd?