| xanga is dead yo. switch over like a mad fool. what?
http://myneutrality.blogspot.com/
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| I've been making my way across the country recently--well, actually twice recently. By tomorrow morning I'll have driven from San Francisco to Maine and back all in one summer. It's really been quite an experience. Crazy, to be sure, and undoubtedly I'll never do it again--but nonetheless well worth it.
I've stumbled upon an observation while in my travels. Hopefully more than just this one, but it's one. Driving down the highways, or standing before some great sight like Niagara Falls, or looking up into the sky, or across a landscape--I'm found myself thinking in picture frames. Oh that would be a great shot there. A field lays before me, golden and spotted with hail bales, behind which lies an old red barn with a windmill--Lake Erie in the distance beyond. If it wasn't for the cell phone tower right in the middle.
I've always been an avid photo taker, much to some people's disgruntlement, and I've constantly found myself doing this. Particularly with photos of nature I will try and crop the photo to avoid the power lines, or often any other sign of civilization or industry that would spoil the picture.
There are some beautiful frames in the world, but so often just outside the lines, or on the other side of the camera there are the crowds of noisy tourists, the satellite dish on top of an old swiss house in a mountain village, the guardrails protecting against lawsuits--the list goes on.
A famous sociologist (don't ask me who) talked a lot about frames and lenses in our world. Now I've never had too much respect for sociologists--to me it all mostly just seemed like a lot of common sense. And when I studied it a lot of it was, but there are some glitters in the glib. (Is that too harsh? My apologies to the sociologists). Anyway, the idea is that we all see the world through the lenses that we've become accustomed to seeing through, and within the frames we've set. In other words, we've trained ourselves to see what we want to see, much like in a photograph. We crop out the negative things, the things that disquiet us, the things that don't quite fit with the mood of the picture, and then we focus the lens onto the part of the image we want to give the most attention, blurring the surrounding but less important objects.
I may do this with photographs and my view of nature sometimes, but my philosophy of life is fact informed and well-reasoned. I've read a lot and explored other views (granted perhaps always through my lens). It's those other narrow-minded people who this must really apply to, right? Of course.
None of us are perhaps foolish enough to assume such a thing, yet even knowing that this is what we do, we accept it. Perhaps there is no way completely around it. But at least to me, I think where this becomes especially scary is in a world where truth is based on our individual perceptions, i.e. relative. I might have the best camera with the wide angle lens that can focus on two multiple spots at once, but my picture is still just that--a picture. Two dimensional.
Now this is not a rant against relativism. I think there is certainly some good within it and existential thought--I am an avid Kierkegaard fan am I not? I simply pose these thoughts, that perhaps might come to mind the next time you take a picture--or the next time you think you have something all figured out.
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| September 4th, 1987
"Luke coming back from donuts: 'I know what Jesus looks like. Nobody believes me, but I know...He wears white with some blue.' What color is his hair? 'Brown.' He has a nice face doesn't he? "Yes...He smiles when we praise Him."
scribbled on the back of a deposit slip. i was 4.
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| It's been a long time. And really I haven't quite had the time recently, since I've been back from Switzerland--but as things would go I now have a decent amount of time on my hands these days. If you missed the whole saga of studying abroad by not reading my other blog, that's too bad. A lot happened and a lot's changed. I've entered a new chapter of my life, and I have no idea what it will look like or where I'm going. And it's tough to go at it alone in a sense. But right now is about today, and tomorrow will be the same.
I don't know if I'll go back to writing about issues or things I'm thinking about on here or not. Maybe I'll give casual updates of my life--that is if anything interesting happens. We'll see. In short though, I'll probably be on here a little more.
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| Well I'm leaving for Switzerland tomorrow, with a brief weekend
stopover in New York. I don't imagine I'll write on here all that
much if at all. It will be a crazy adventure and I'm really
excited. If you want to stay up on my life and my adventures over
there, check out my blog specifically for my time in Switzerland:
www.myneutrality.blogspot.com
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