Tag: point of view

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From a Red Fort Window, Taj Mahal, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

The Beautiful Remarkable Thing

You see a thing
A million times
A beautiful thing
A remarkable thing

It becomes a familiar thing
The thing we’ve all seen
In the same way
Photographed from the same spot

And so you go there
And when you take the photograph
You stand in the same spot
And take the same photograph

And damn if it ain’t as beautiful
As you’ve been told it was all these years
As beautiful as all the photographs
Taken from the same damn spot

And so you say to yourself
Yep. Been there
Done the beautiful thing
Seen and photo’d the remarkable thing

So you leave
And there’s some time
So you go to another thing
And the other thing’s pretty cool too

But then…
Then you see something
Some new other thing
Through a window in the cool thing

So you go up to the window
To get better look at this new other thing
And it takes you a minute
‘Cause you’ve never seen this new other thing

And it’s absolutely magnificent
And you wonder, just for a second
Where it was, all along
How’d everyone miss this exquisite thing

Before you realize
It’s the beautiful thing
The Remarkable thing
Seen from a different place

And it just blows your mind

I mean
I think the beautiful remarkable thing
Is even more beautiful, more remarkable
When seen from this different place

But everyone’s hung up
On the one place
The perfect place
For seeing the beautiful remarkable thing

So that’s how everyone sees it

And, yes
This poem is a metaphor
But what’s more important
Is finally seeing the beautiful remarkable thing

As if for the very first time

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Near Joshua Tree National Park, California, United States of America

Velocity

The world reels by, unfurling at 90 miles an hour. At this speed, travel gains the sense of dance even on a relatively straight, flat interstate such as this section of I-395. I am aware of the countryside, the gentle undulations of the valley floor contrasting the angular gyrations of slowly eroding hillsides; I am aware of the thinning stands of Joshua Tree and can pick out a few individual shapes for their magnificence or their decrepitude; I notice the snowline band so evenly frosting the hill tops, that I am climbing toward the line, that I am now above it and that the snow along the roadside proceeds from spare dollops to a thin crust with mesquite poking through.