09-9-18

Perspective. It's interesting how different things can look depending on from where you're looking at them. There are ways that your brain can be hardwired to believe in things in a certain way and this belief system is essentially fixed. Faith based societies are often like that, the people raised to believe in something unconditionally and once that belief system has been so diligently ingrained in its people all other ways of life seem absurd. I would like to think I'm more open minded than that. Or better, I'd like to think I'm a critical thinker, not simply accepting rules and norms at face value but at the same time allowing my convictions to be informed by what's going on around me.

This image is about the bigger picture vs. the details and, well, as it all started, it's about perspective. Perched way up high like that in those cherry pickers as one is wont to imagine doing when looking at this picture your glance would be directed downwards and back at what lay below but the beautiful part of the scene is the scene itself, the big sky in the background that would be missed, the elegance of mechanical arms reaching out towards that sky like if you were in that basket you'd be that much closer to beauty. But that's not the case, the place to be is on the ground.

I had an apartment in Toronto that had a bay window with some pretty nice windows. A wonderful little table for two and two old, rescued from the garbage, wooden chairs. There were a couple of charming little plants and it all faced west so it caught the afternoon sun quite nicely. It was the nicest part of the apartment. I would lie on my couch and look at it for hours, I took photographs of it, I wrote descriptions of it, but I rarely sat there because when you were immersed in it you couldn't see it. You were stuck looking back at the rest of the mediocre apartment with its worn carpets, bad wallpaper, and dark, windowless corners. It was better to not be in the window and want it than to have it.

But only sometimes.

Because I think a lot of times we are distracted by the specifics and lose track of the spirit of what it is we're after. I mean, I'd rather look at a mountain than climb it while others would rather climb it than look at it. Neither is wrong, as long as neither is confused by what it is about the mountain they are attracted to or if they are even attracted to mountains at all. I've known where my mountain is for a while now. It makes me happy to think that one day, maybe even not that long from now, I might be able to look out on the horizon and see it there occupying a regular part of what defines my world.

That's enough for now. I haven't slept in 24 hours and even then it was only for a couple of hours. Goodnight.