Absent frames
I was waiting my turn at the framers shop. There were plenty of things on the walls to look at while I waited, and there were more things on the floor leaning in piles against one another. Most of my attention focused on some dried flowers and plants which had been stuck onto paper with small strips of brown paper tape. The plants were old and had not lasted well. I do not think they were in good enough condition to be of botanical interest. Not one of the plants was identified. Their colours were faded. A label on the bottom of each plant’s page read: Pensionnat des Fréres des Écoles Chrétiennes REIMS. There was no date to be seen, but it was clear that the pressed plants and their labels were not from this century, nor the last. There had been twenty frames of this vegetation, four rows of five each, but three were already gone. They were being sold individually. The twenty of them took up a large wall space so the spaces of the now absent plants did not provide a space to hang something else. I wish I had made a photograph of them, but I didn’t. The spaces were nothing more than spaces between framed things on the wall of the shop. EVH
notes from an urban hibernation 