The Big Wheel

The Big Wheel
I appear bigger in real life.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Sid



Here’s looking at you.

As I mentioned a couple of postings ago, this site has been abandoned for nearly a year. That there has been any movement on it recently is likely the direct result of one person, and he knows who he is.

I am also relatively sure that the person in question is the only one that visits this site on a regular basis (and possibly the only one who visits the site at all), checking in as it were from time to time, and leaving behind little messages to let me know he poked his head in. I wanted to leave something for him too.

Thinking that, I had developed this mental image.

There is this dark and quiet room somewhere in my imagination. The door is closed. Without warning the door is thrown open and a head appears in the opening. It scans the room and asks, “Anybody here?” waits for a second to check for an answer, and then says to itself, “I guess not.” A hand reaches in and tosses a business card on the floor near the small pile of other cards there, and then disappears. The door closes.

Now the cards themselves are interesting. They aren’t really business cards as I initially described them. They are more like the old Victorian calling or visiting cards, carte de visite actually. They show images of the caller.

Something like these images.

 Sid and I at Ryerson, dress optional


I’ve been intending to do something like this for a while, again another pot on the back burner looking to be stirred.

 Sid and Jack Daniels


What this really is is a posting about friendship, and appreciation too. Also I was hoping to give him a little surprise and make him laugh.

 
Sid on the Alabama

As a note for person or persons unknown who may have stumbled on this site and have stopped long enough to scan the pictures and text I should like to offer a word of explanation. I have known Sid for many years now and I am fortunate to count him as friend. We met at Ryerson (when it wasn’t a University) in front of the doors of the lecture hall in the Film and Photography building in Toronto, Ontario. We struck up a conversation that day and have been friends ever since. We have hung out together, traveled together, and even though the courses of our lives have caused us to be separated physically by thousands of miles, we still take the time out to keep in touch. 

Pilot Sid


Sid of Muskoka

These are a few of the images and times that we share.

8 comments:

Sid Plested said...

Sigh...it's so sad...at some point in my life, I opted for a kind of, I don't know, gravity in my deportment. I don't wear T-shirts with dopey sayings, I don't wear patterns (okay, striped shirts to work sometimes) and I don't have any tattoos that I regret. How sad that this kept me from pretending to be blazing away at Japanese Zeros when photographed at the Oerlikons on the Alabama.
- Sid

Sid Plested said...

On the other hand, it's difficult to look at the pictures with the chair and the pilot gear and make THAT much of a case for grave deportment.
- Sid

Sid Plested said...

Yep, we've had some damn good times together. The southern US trip was particularly fun. If you're taking requests for postings, a New Orleans photo posting would be great.
- Sid

Cloin said...

I've actually been wondering what I could post next. I have already posted some New Orleans and vicinity photographs but maybe, if I hauled out the archive, I could find some other interesting things in there.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Sid Plested said...

I'm terribly sorry, there is a New Orleans posting back a couple of years, my apologies. That's what I get for concentrating on the Niagara Falls piece.
- Sid

Sid Plested said...

No postings for a month or two...were new postings just the false dawn of the Renaissance, bloggishly speaking?

Cloin said...

Not really a false dawn, more of a clogged imagination. I had been wanting to do those couple of postings for a long time and, once they were 'out there', I didn't really know what else to say.

I've got a new idea for a posting percolating at the moment, nothing momentous, but it will require some photography on my part. I'll have to get a man on that.

Sid Plested said...

"I'll have to get a man on that."

I don't know who this guy is, but kick him in the butt, he's apparently not worth a damn when it comes to following through on your orders.

- Sid