August 16, 2006
Fighting Fish
I had best explain this photo.
There are two fish bowls (actually three, but, if I had included the third, the angle would have been less artful). The aforementioned bowls rest on a ledge in the front window of the famous village institution, Marc Anthony's, La Pizzera, where, most summer days, the dashing Mark Anthony, himself, holds forth at the top of his lungs with faux Italian belligerence. But I digress.
Each bowl contains a single fighting fish, snuffling the water surface, tail down. The fish are separated for obvious reasons.
Suspended above the bowls, illulminated in neon, are the last four digits of the phone number for La Pizzera (1-508-295-5956 in full, in case you're in the neighborhood).
Reflected in each bowl are two upside down SUVs, as well as the white building with black shutters across the street which houses the Pier View Restaurant.
There is a third (fifth in photo) SUV parked out front, with only its front bumper showing.
Looking through La Pizzeria window, past the fish bowls, you can see the front window of the Pier View across the street, upon which is FISH FRY is stenciled in red, flanked by two golden stars.
If one were inclined to interpret signs from the universe, or slightly psychotic --or both-- one might turn one's attention to the irony of the fish fry sign appearing just above the fighting fish ( actually, thirty feet away, a visual metaphor for the future) in the same shot. One could go even further and say that it is a message about the future of the "fighters".
The golden six-pointed stars are dripping with symbolic meaning (The Star of David's a good start). At second glance, maybe those stars are only five-pointed, but a star's a star and it certainly counts. toward metaphorophoto points.
More points are awarded for the presence of all those SUVs, and the backwards neon numbers (so..o..o Leonardo), too complex to analyze in a blog entry. We shall leave that task to a talmudic scholar. And the frosting on the metaphorophotographic cake? Reflected on the left hand side of each bowl is a barely visible (pity) American flag.
How's that for packing it in folks?
What do you think it means?
Photo note: As above, so below