I remember the words of a friend from a long time ago. She said: “Ask a man what the stars are made of, and he’ll tell you what’s inside of his heart.” I don’t know if she was quoting anyone or not, and I suppose it doesn’t matter. The words in-and-of themselves are important—at least in symbolic ways. Her words have been a part of my thoughts since I first heard them…long, long ago…in another century. I know what the stars are made of, and in a sense, I suppose the content of stars does match the content of my heart. Humans (and everything else) are made from “star stuff” as Carl Sagan once said. The elements that comprise matter were forged in the hearts of stars and released through supernova explosions. Some elements were formed during supernova explosions, and so—in a very real and symbolic sense, we are star stuff. I wasn’t thinking about stars on the day that I made this picture. I was thinking of rust and sunlight and what our views of such things may say of our inner environments. I made this picture, yesterday. My days as a mover are numbered; there is other work, more appropriate work, perhaps in another city. There’s no reason why I should spend my days at a truck yard or riding about in one potentially lethal truck or another. There’s no real reason why I should be required to remove dental equipment from an office, before moving its replacement equipment in. There are times when I’m required to come close to hazardous material: dental juice as the stuff is called. It’s the gunk that collects in suction receptacles. It’s biologically active. Some of it is green. I wasn’t thinking about dental juice and fragments of teeth when I took this picture. I was occupied with moving old boxes from the truck yard and packing them into one of the larger members of my father’s ramshackle fleet. When we move equipment into a dental office, or the basement of one, we keep the boxes, the packing foam, the sheets of bubble wrap, and other effluvia. It collects in the truck yard, before we amass sufficient quantities to haul to a dump. There are other things in the truck yard as well…oil drums, filled with rainwater and dubious contaminants. Strange bits of metal: truck guts and remnants of x-ray machines, vacuum pumps, and compressors: they rust and crumble into cryptic breeds of decay. An oil drum drew my attention. It had seen better days. There’s less of it now than before, and what remains is flagrant with rust. I noticed patterns, shapes, implications of geology. Just above a gray and murky level of scummy, slimy water, I saw what appeared to be topographic maps, or the motions of magma, frozen in time. It was the best thing I saw, yesterday, in the truck yard, at least, and so I captured it. This is what I saw. There will come a time when the truck yard exists in the past…behind me. I look forward to those days, and I wonder if I’ll ever think back. I doubt it. There will be other wonders to see: other topographic maps, but until then, I can—at least—enjoy small wonders in a corroded oil drum. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting. I’ve had a hectic week and so I have to catch up on viewing and commenting myself. Hopefully, I can achieve a bit of this later tonight and over the weekend.