Tag Archives: Earth

A Perspective on Perspective

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I once read a philosopher’s observation, “You can’t have a perspective on your perspective without somehow escaping it.” That statement grabbed me and still grabs me as continue to explore the finitude of the little prism through which I view this beautiful world. Here I want to share you a clip from CNN in which our lovely planet is seen from the vantage point of a satellite on the very outskirts of our solar system. Our planet is so small that it can hardly be seen in this photograph, while other heavenly bodies dominate the foreground. It makes me think of a line from W. H. Auden’s poetry in which he describe you and I as “clinging to the granite skirts of our sensible old planet.” (http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/13/us/nasa-saturn-earth-picture/index.html?hpt=hp_c3) And here is a relevant poem from a recent New Yorker magazine:

THE LANDSCAPE OF VILHELM HAMMERSHOI

By Vona Groarke

  • Between water reading itself a story
  • with no people in it
  • and fields, illegible, and a sky
  • that promises nothing,
  • least of all what will happen now,
  • are the trees
  • that do not believe in
  • any version of themselves
  • not even the one in which
  • they are apparently everyday trees
  • and not a sequence of wooden frames
  • for ordinary leaves.

A Poem about the Ego

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I love you poets and creative writers. You so elegantly capture glimpses of reality which otherwise might go unnoticed by prosaic minds such as mine. This poem entitled “Ego” is a delightful approach to the subject.

 

EGO

(By Denise Duhamel)

 

I just didn’t get it—

even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand

and a lemon (the moon) in the other,

her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.

I just couldn’t grasp it—

this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly

no one could even see themselves moving.

I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough

I could be the one person to feel what no one else could,

sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.

Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,

even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange,

I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive.

I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap,

“The world doesn’t revolve around you!”

The earth was fragile and mostly water,

just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,

just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.

Looking back on that third grade science demonstration,

I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures—

especially people who have an understanding

of the excruciating crawl of the world,

who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning

and the tininess that it is to be one of us.

But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force

who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo.

I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,

or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.