Googling perspectives

[vaneramos]

Photo: goldenrod in Eramosa River Park yesterday. This detail comes from a larger image posted in texture and cross-posted here, behind the cut.

~~~~~~~~~~

Walking along the river I find the world drained of colour, but looking more closely I see its complexity. Nature's texture now is more splendid than at any other season. The leaves have fallen off everything except the buckthorns, revealing an exquisite weaving of twigs, but perennial weeds are still standing and the soil is carpeted with a tapestry* of leaves. Soon snow will begin to obscure it all. When life returns in a few months, it will be full, dense and lush. For now we have a celebration of the delicacy of life as it dissolves into sleep.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I am surrounded by another living fabric, the texture of sound. Sometimes everything settles into silence except for the refrigerator's drone. Then a set of tires will go rushing past. Then the tremulous engine of a truck slowing down at the corner of York Road and Kingsmill Avenue. Sometimes trucks shake the whole house with their passage, like an earthquake. Pulling away, they emit a series of ascending groans as they shift gears. Now there's the whine of brakes. Another truck preparing to turn? No, a moment through the kitchen window I glimpse of a city bus careening down the line, making a peremptory halt at the next stop. Then it gets carried away down perspective lines, growing smaller.

If we follow perspectives too far, our minds grow smaller, too. It's better to gaze at the sky for an afternoon. Monster clouds looks like friendly farm animals. We can take a huge expanse of heaven into our minds this way.

Sometimes buildings line up like blueprint drawings along the perspective lines of hydro wires. The wires cross, confusing my sense of which way to go or look. I prefer the bird's eye view that makes everywhere possible. Maps are diagrams of possibility. I could set out in my car and follow lines for an afternoon, then follow them home without losing track of the world. No matter how many ways you want to go, you can only follow one path at a time. That's the physical reality, but our minds can go many ways at once. Somewhere I read we can hold seven distinct ideas in our minds at once.

I downloaded the new Google toolbar for my browser. It lets me follow flights of fancy. I see that Paul Martin's government is considering sweeping reform of the Canadian electoral system. We may all have an opportunity to voice our opinions. This isn't mere fancy, it's a hope of significant change, the kind of hope desired by many people beyond our borders. I type "Canada electoral reform" as my first Google experiment. I can click each of the keywords to find them highlighted on the search pages. The toolbar stops popups, too. Hooray!

It also has a blog button, so I sign up for Blogger.com. That's where I'll store notes on web sites and news stories I want to remember, especially those Globe and Mail articles that vanish into archives after a week. Here is a new way of enlarging my perspective on the textures and rhythms of cyberspace.

*Tapesty is becoming a cliché. I need to abstain from using it and find better words.