{"id":72,"date":"2025-06-28T11:48:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T11:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2025-07-16T00:43:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T00:43:56","slug":"2-part-iii-cropped-sign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Cropped Sign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Parking Lot Ambiance by Eric Nguyen\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F2121066444&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=750&#038;maxwidth=500\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s say I was in a quiet little town tucked into the hills. The kind where you hear wind before cars and there\u2019s this hardware store that is still using handwritten labels! I\u2019d wandered out after breakfast, coffee still in hand, and ended up behind an old restaurant with chipped paint and a few crooked parking signs. I wasn\u2019t aiming for anything in particular, just walking. That\u2019s when I saw this odd little post tucked in some gravel and weeds. It looked like it meant business! &#8230; even if there wasn\u2019t anyone around to enforce it. Something about how serious it looked in such an empty lot made me stop. So I took a picture. I liked the contrast; how the world can be so quiet yet so dramatic at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-photo is-provider-flickr wp-block-embed-flickr\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/203048287@N03\/54619394565\/in\/album-72177720327200479\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54619394565_da6d2669a7.jpg\" alt=\"parkingSignCropped\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The original sign said \u201cDO NOT LEAVE THIS PARKING LOT WITHOUT YOUR CAR (CARS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER\u2019S EXPENSE),\u201d but I chose to look at it a different way, \u201cDO NOT LEAVE THIS PARKING LOT.\u201d The phrase on its own feels weirdly forceful. Like&#8230; it\u2019s not about parking anymore, but about <strong>control<\/strong>. Almost like life itself is standing there with crossed arms saying, \u201cHey. Don\u2019t even think about going anywhere.\u201d Perhaps, if I treated it as life advice, maybe it\u2019s a reminder not to bail on my responsibilities, not to leave a place or situation before you\u2019ve done what you came to do. Or perhaps it\u2019s the opposite&#8211;warning not to stay stuck in the same place just because you\u2019re scared to leave. It\u2019s funny how chopping off a few words can flip meaning completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hm&#8230; this was an interesting creative challenge now that I think about it. We\u2019re so used to reading signs without thinking, but if you isolate part of some text, suddenly it feels poetic or unsettling or just strange. It makes me want to pay closer attention when I walk past signs or labels and play with them for a bit, like they\u2019re unintentional metaphorical messages hiding in plain sight. They show that meaning isn&#8217;t what it seems. It\u2019s built by what we different individuals see in it and what we take away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This whole experience reminded me that even the most ordinary things like a parking sign can become part of a story if you look at them differently. I came across this piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.signsandartwork.com\/signwriter\">traditional signwriting and creative lettering<\/a>, and it made me think about how much intention goes into the way signs are made, even when they seem purely for functional purposes. Whether it\u2019s letters painted by hand or bold block fonts, signs are designed to be noticed. But when we crop them, reframe them, or just read them out of context like for this challenge, they start to feel more like poetry than instruction. That shift from directing to reflective is what made this assignment so unexpectedly fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s say I was in a quiet little town tucked into the hills. The kind where you hear wind before cars and there\u2019s this hardware store that is still using handwritten labels! I\u2019d wandered out after breakfast, coffee still in hand, and ended up behind an old restaurant with chipped paint and a few crooked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[9,14,15,18],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intro-visual","tag-ds106","tag-introvisual","tag-visualassignments","tag-visualassignments129"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}