I went down to the “wrong” side of Lake Parker yesterday to watch the sun go down. I call it the wrong side because I am more likely to be mugged over there than anywhere else I occasionally go to.
There is a pier over there that extends out into the water and I have gone there several times because of the vantage point it creates in capturing the sun as it goes down.
The problem with a pier like that though is that once you walk out to the end (perhaps 200 to 300 feet) you are isolated away from the road and this brings a real vulnerability … there is only one way in and out.
So last night, I was bringing Kermie with me to shoot him as he played his banjo trying to find a rainbow connection. Morgan has made him for me a while back and I just thought shooting him as the sun was going down behind him might be worth trying. There were a couple of older guys out there and while initially I scoped it out as being a totally safe situation, I was wrong.
While they tried to pull it out of my hands, I raised my own aggression level to where they backed down. It was a surreal moment … imagine me getting mugged by a couple of old geezers. The MAGA hat on one of them should have given me a clue but I would never have been able to report that one to the police … imagine the shame!
Anyway I managed to get a few pictures of Kermie. I was not going to be intimidated out of what I originally set out to do. But the endless barrage of negative and sarcastic comments from behind me reminded me that a short shoot was a wiser choice.
So there is only one Kermie shot here in this blog. Sorry. The other couple of shots are ones that I got a little further down the road as I returned home past a fishing pier. The setting sun was producing a lovely glow behind the trees and I thought it worth stopping for.
The last of these three shots is a combine image of ten shots that I took to show the flight of a lone Ibis as he crossed through my frame.
I enjoy putting together that kind of image because when I anchor the images, it gives a good feel of the actual path that our eyes don’t really notice. Hope you like the shots at the end of the blog!
So, the thought that really sparked this blog was from this morning as I pieced together that combined image. My thoughts were about perspective.
Last night when I was watching him, I would have sworn he was flying in a straight line. And I am quite certain that he also thought he was flying in a straight line. But likely a slight breeze was pulling him occasionally off it.
If the earlier “mugging” had been reported, both the Ibis and I could have taken a lie detector test and we would both have passed it, in our belief that he was flying a straight line.
Yet obviously we were both wrong. And, so here is the point;
Every one of us goes through life, experiencing and witnessing situations that either happen to us, or play out around us. We believe in good conscience that we have witnessed what we witnessed. We see it as a fact.
And yet it is only our own perspective.
How we perceive a happening, the perspective from which we view it, and the method we commit it to memory, all create a unique set of parameters that record the fact as anything other than factual.
It’s why two people can witness the same accident and give startlingly different accounts of it. It’s why a democrat and republican can listen to the same dotard ramblings and feel either shame or pride in what they heard. It’s why two lovers in an argument can walk away afterwards feeling totally righteous in their hurt and upset.
Humans require a life that is structured around “facts”. They are our security blanket. Take them away and an instability is introduced into our lives that invalidates so much of what we have assumed to be true.
Millions of young children know that Santa comes down a chimney and leaves presents for them once a year. It’s a simple fact.
Millions of believers know that if they are good christians then they go to heaven when they die. It’s a simple fact.
Millions of muslims know that if they commit an act of martyrdom in the name of allah, then there are 70 virgins waiting for them on their transition to eternity. It’s a simple fact.
At the Nuremberg trials, Göring offered the sentiment that history is written by the victors. And so, how much of what we have been taught in history is fact?
Facts exist only in physics and the sciences. They don’t exist in our lives beyond that. No matter how we wish they would.
Nothing is black and white, right or wrong, good or evil.
Hundreds of millions of us around the world described the act of flying airplanes into the twin towers as pure evil. Hundreds of millions of others viewed it as a justified act against the great satan.
Tens of millions of us are disgusted that a rich dotard can boast about “popping tic-tacs while grabbing girls by the pussy”. Tens of millions wanted that same guy to make america great again.
In wars everyone believes that god is on their side. In the perennial battles of good versus evil when have you ever heard anyone say that they are are fighting on the side of evil?
So, when we each stand here convinced in our own sense of righteousness, it is important to understand that people with a diametrically opposed view to our own can also feel righteous.
“honestly officer, those two old geezers tried to mug me!”
“sure, Mr Ronan. Next you’ll be telling me that bird was flying a straight line”.
