Brussels - Recent Random Thoughts

 Someone posted a video on Valentines day of a guy playing the cello in an arcade, on a distractingly complicated mosaic tile floor.  For some reason my mind stuck on the floor.  I thought of the hours, tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours of meticulous work that went into planning, designing, creating the tiles, the hours and hours spent on someone's knees placing the tiles, grouting them in.  I am not sure I could do that.  I wonder if when they place the tiles, they think, yes, but if I do it right, it will be here for hundreds or thousands of years (I have walked on tile mosaic floors in Italy and Greece that date back well over 2,000 years.) 

I recently learned the difference between a poisonous animal, and a venomous animal.  Many of us improperly use the two words interchangeably.  A poisonous makes you sick if you bite it, a venomous animal makes you sick if it bites (or stings) you.  Percision in the use of the language.  A comment on a post of mine, taught me the difference between a tortoise and a turtle (land and water.) 

I added to my understanding of the difference between a biography and autobiography.  The obvious is that a biography is written about the life of a person and an autobiography is written by a person about their life.   What I read said that beyond that we should consider the bias of the author.  A person writing an autobiography is going to filter the story to reflect through their point of view.  The biography is shaped by the bias or prejudice of the author, often without an opportunity for the person to offer input. 

I read something that made a lot of sense.  The question was how much should I spend on a camera.  The answer was the amount you are comfortable with using and not living in fear of it being damaged, lost or stolen.  The author wrote about buying his dream Leica, then leaving it home if the weather was not perfect, or the trip was complicated, or the neighborhood was not perfect.  He traded it off after a couple of years of dusting it.  Buy the best that you are comfortable using. There are a lot of things that this applies to in life. 

Why is this post titled, Brussels, that is where the floor above was found.  If I didn't put it down when I began, I might not have remembered by the time I got to describe it in the post.  The photo is in an unsorted folder of over 30,000 images, in context I can tell you where most of them are from, out of context, it is just another floor someplace I have been.