Nonevents?

Paul Graham works the everyday. One especially interesting set of juxtapostions is between New York and North Dakota. Take a look at his archive for this set of photos. It is from his new 12-volume book project titled "a shimmer of possibility". The work is arranged in a set of picture sequences of "non-events". If you follow the link above - go through Pittsburgh and there is New York/North Dakota. This is the stuff of life that most people don't take a second look at. Graham does and he reminds Big Frank of Walt Whitman's catalogues and some of what Dennis O'Driscoll has written.

Whitman in his "Song of Myself" catalogues the events of his day

"The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The carnival of sleighs, the clinking and shouted jokes and the pelts of
snowballs;
The hurrahs for popular favorites . . . . the fury of roused mobs,
The flap of the curtained litter -- the sick man inside, borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd -- the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd;
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,"

Now here is Dennis O'Driscoll from the poem "Forever" in his collection of poems entitled "RealityCheck".

"Forever the girl upending the nearly empty crisp packet and
savouring life to the full, to the last salty cheese-and-onion-
flavoured crumb.

Forever the old ladies who smile at babies like politicians and
suspect the meter reader may not really be the meter reader.

Forever a freckled builder in high-vis jacket swinging his lunch
bag as he clocks in at the chipboard hoarding.

Forever the teenagers who can't pass up a hat display wihtout
trying on preposterous headgear in a department store.

Forever the tall schoolboy with ponytail and full-length leather
coat. And forever the small one, pate shaved almost bald, nursing
a cigarette like a sore finger."

These are the stuff of life - the non-events of life:

"Forever. And ever. All going well."