Imagination

Imagination is, in general, the power or process of producing mental images and ideas. Though, imagine what someone else might be thinking just by observation? Through the observation comes the imagination, which is what makes our sensory experience meaningful, enabling us to interpret and make sense of it. In my case, from my observation of a homeless man waiting for the public bus. After observing the melancholy old man with no home and start gathering information through what I perceived it begins to produce mental imagery in my head, visual and otherwise, which is what makes it possible for us to think outside the confines of our present perceptual reality. We begin noticing similarities between memories from the past, personal experiences, even possibilities for the future, and we weigh alternatives against on another to test our ability of creating a mental vision from a conventional perception or from a fresh, original, individual one. That is why through the observation of strangers your imagination begins to ponder on the possibilities about what is, what has been, and perhaps most importantly, what might be.

In my observations I recorded an old, lonely, man with holes the size of moon craters on his clothing. His skin seemed to appear once milky but now faced sun patches mixed in with unpleasant, what seemed to be, muddy dirt. Though his gestures were quite tranquil, the surrounding flies hovering his hair clots sure caught attention. He just seemed to be lost in his own twilight zone, as he stood on the worn out green bench in his slouched posture. This all led me to think what could he possibly be thinking? Obviously, the first thing that occurred to me was that he most likely rushing the bus to arrive in his mind. Also, the thought of what he is going to do once he is going to get on, or to keep ready the entrance fee. He could have just been focusing on the cars drive by, the rumbling they made every time one would swish by, music playing from all different backgrounds -depending on the customs of the drivers and passengers- exceptionally conspicuous, even overhearing a conversation or two. The point was, everything I noticed him doing I promptly thought why could this be and made a conclusion on my terms.

The phenomenon that imagination really does produce itself from possibilities from personal experience, memories from the past, or also the conditioning of stereotypes into my head since childhood also gave me somewhat a clue of what this poor, old, man could really be thinking. The memory I had of being on a bus and a homeless man just entering, screaming, talking to himself, just plain being obnoxious. He might just be purposely preparing himself before entering the bus to start commotion just for attention, saying to himself “ This time they will notice me and not just look away pretending I don’t exist.” Even being in a situation were the homeless man confronted me by trying to forcefully intimidate me so I would be pressured to give him money, he is probably looking for the most easy to manipulate person by analyzing them by clothing or age or even ethnicity. Homeless people are usually labeled as lazy bums who would do anything for money to get a hold on drugs, that is why I imagined him thinking about