serendipity and blogging

I had a fascinating conversation at lunchtime with Jeff Nunokawa about the different ways in which we approach our daily blogging practice: without wishing to speak for him, the essential distinction is that he starts from within; from feeling, or emotion, or affect, or state of mind, or state of being, or whatever it is that one wakes up in, or with (with, that is, in the sense of a mood, not as in with a cat pawing one's face wanting kibble).  Whereas I start from the concrete, from a thing observed (and, of course, to a greater or lesser extent, from an image).  It's rare that I'm hunting for a visual equivalence; it's also rare that I start off the day with a pre-meditated plan that ends up, in fact, being where I end up.  I rely a good deal, I was saying, on serendipity, on attentiveness, on looking.   

Today was a case in point.  I was pretty sure that I was going to have another go with those fish.  Indeed, I took twenty four fishy shots (I'm quite partial to some of them).  Actually that's twenty three fishy ones, and a rather blurred picture of some reeds, taken by mistake.  But then, when I was driving down St Francis, later, in search of a bottle of melon vodka (it came to me that a glass of this would be just the thing with which to celebrate the end of teaching, but it wasn't to be found - though Susan's wine and spirits are going to try and order one for me ...) - there, out of the window, when I was stopped at lights, was this mural - much more summery and cheerful and celebratory than those fish, or even, probably, than the elusive vodka.