The word "strange" has been rattling around my head for a while. A Google
search defines "strange" as "unusual or surprising in a way that is unsettling
or hard to understand." The world is full of things that are "unusual or
surprising" but it's the "unsettling or hard to understand" twist that makes
"strange" especially interesting. It inhabits the twilight zone between
straightforward and incomprehensible. Mostly, we LIKE strange things -- while
straightforward can be dull and incomprehensible can be tiresome, for me
"strange" is often like a little puzzle and solving puzzles is fun!
Some things are unusual but don't make the cut for strange -- say, finding a
really good slice of pizza in New York for 99 cents. Others, like a total lunar
eclipse, used to be really strange but aren't any more. Still others are
strange on purpose -- like snake-handling Pentecostal pastors and Edgar Allan
Poe stories. And once in a while, like the images in this series, strange
generously appears by accident.
It often takes me a while to figure out why a scene initially looked strange
but, like the famous quote on obscenity, I know it when I see it.
