Day 3 |Through the City Window: self Isolation – stuck Indoors

I am self isolating and for a while (at least) I shall be looking at the beloved outside from inside. I shall take one photo a day through my window. I may not post them all, but the photos will be a log of my restricted view of what is beyond the glass and as far as I can see. My world and horizons restricted by the boundaries of the buildings of the great city in which I live.

The Flying London Busman

A flying London busman sails his ghostly empty London bus unstopping past the empty bus-stops and shuttered shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs—doomed to ride on alone forever.

This image is Pic 3. in my photography project ‘Through the window of self isolation: while stuck indoors.

Something about the lonely unstopping empty bus riding onward through the empty city street made me think of, and make an analogy to the famous myth of the ghost ship the Flying Dutchman sailing the oceans forever—

The Flying Dutchman

Unyielding in the pride of defiance,
Afloat with none to serve or command,
Lord of himself at last, and all by Science,
He seeks the Vanished Land.

Alone, by the one light of his one thought,
He steers to find the shore from which he came,
Fearless of in what coil he may be caught
On seas that have no name.

Into the night he sails, and after night
There is a dawning, though there be no sun;
Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight,
Unsighted, he sails on.

At last there is a lifting of the cloud
Between the flood before him and the sky;
And then—though he may curse the Power aloud
That has no power to die—

He steers himself away from what is haunted
By the old ghost of what has gone before,
Abandoning, as always, and undaunted
One fog-walled island more.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Stay safe and keep well my friends