Waiting In Vain...

So I waited a whole goddamn year to take this one photo. Dissolve, fade...

About ten years ago when I first came to San Francisco, I was ambling about one evening after a few beers and just happened to turn and glance on a sight that stopped me dead cold with awe and delight. There before me stood a giant, humongous bust of Michelangelo's David, as large as the full figure original. It was situated in a building lobby and plainly visible directly from the street. I was dumbstruck. Huge, imposing, gaudy even, but beautiful all the same. 

For years I looked all over downtown for the damn thing but could not find it. After a while, I just figured it was more a temporary installation than an hallucination, and left it at that. That all changed January of this year... there it was- sitting pretty and mocking me, defiant and aloof as ever! It was not downtown at all, but in a sketchier, less traversed area I don't usually frequent. So I whip out the ol' WA and I'm just about to press the shutter, when this woman comes up and says, "Think it looks good now- should have seen it a couple of weeks ago with the Christmas wreath around its neck." And then, of course, I couldn't take the picture. She had implanted an even better picture in my head that made the current one sober by comparison. And so I vowed to wait and forgo the single to hit the home run later this December. This time there was no forgetting the location. 

Lo, last week I returned to take what was rightfully mine, having waited so diligently, so patiently- but again, it was just not to be. The full sized neck wreath had been replaced with one sitting daintily atop his head as a Roman victory crown befit a Caesar. It certainly looked cool, almost made me laugh- had it not deflated an entire year's worth of anticipation. Cute, imaginative- but visually, it wasn't nearly the home run the much larger wreath presented. Maybe next year...