Ways of Viewing

Tuesday, 11/26/24

I can do this. Windows are my favorite object.

Years ago when I was desperate to find a new job and felt that literally anything would be better than what I had, I got a job interview with a window company. After getting off the phone with who could have been my gruff future boss, I walked with Silas up a mountain. From nearly the top, I turned around where the city of Altoona with all its roads, houses, and windows sprawled below. My mental health wicked and poisoned, I romanticized waxing poetic about windows to strangers. Of course I could talk about windows all day.

Four years later I am married, work in mental health, and bought a house where if the wind blew just right during snowfall, flakes entered our mudroom to dazzle us as they melted mid-air. Thousands of dollars later, a man is walking into our old, cozy home to replace our windows. Our windows: warped circus glass separated into four panes by what looks like cherry wood. I loved them with the tenderness of any naïve poet but knew they had to go. Much banging and calking and suctioning and heating ensued to install their imposter triple-paned replacements trimmed with vinyl that imitates cherry wood.

Now the light in the mudroom is brilliant and fresh like the gorgeous cousin who shows up to the family function while you’re trying to talk to your uncle about vermicomposting. I don’t know how to welcome this bright light that wears designer clothes and eats all organic. This bright light was never desperate to leave their job of illuminating, penetrating, and making heads turn. This bright light never needed to romanticize windows because the windows always romanticized them.

I never said I wasn’t still mentally ill * laughs *

Wednesday, 11/27/24

November 27th. This is the date that comes to mind when people mention Thanksgiving. But here we are on Thanksgiving Eve.

The men in my life talked about their mothers today. Men loving and worrying over their mothers and fathers is the most tender thing. And what a shame it is when mothers and fathers aren’t tender. And how when that happens, sometimes their children aren’t talking tenderly about their parents for the audience of me.

Thursday, 11/28/24

Saints of Gratitude: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, Jane Goodall, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Long Litt Woon, the Buddhists, Diane Ackerman, David Abram, Margaret Renkl, Robert Macfarlane, Sam Beam, Maria Popova, my mother, Josephine Jardine, Sophie Strand, Clark Strand, Perdita Finn, Molly McCully Brown, Kristen Wickert, Maira Kalman, Debbie Millman, Alie Ward, Jarod K. Anderson, Katherine May, dogs, Kerri ni Dochartaigh, Terry Tempest Williams, whoever is behind morecorecore, Ram Dass.

There are so many more.

Friday, 11/29/24

Dioramas have always fascinated me. They are representations of reality, whether they’re hand-built, in the cyber world, or movies. In the film “Synecdoche, New York” a man builds a life-size version of NYC in a warehouse. In “The Truman Show”, a man’s life is put up on display for America to watch. Watching Truman go about his day became part of peoples’ routines as they got up in the morning or went to bed. A long time ago, I discovered a diorama of Deep Time called “Universcale” that Nikon created. The technology of this website was rich for its time and I still visit it today. A designer named Josh Worth created “If the Moon Were Only One Pixel”, a diorama of the distance between planets. Dioramas provide the bird’s-eye view. They provide the ability to discern something large and complicated. Other types of dioramas can be found in museums. The subject may not be large or complicated, but instead extinct, dangerous, or archaic.

There is this thing I have been doing for many, many years. I tend to call it “rising up” as if flying upwards like a bird to get the bigger picture. But I didn’t like calling it that because it sounds pretentious or grandiose. When I “rise up”, I am looking at the situation I’m currently in from up-high or far-away so that I can gain perspective or make a good choice. My mind zips into the past or future or zips up past the rings of Saturn. When I zip up past the rings of Saturn, the fact that I made this or that flaw is miniscule. My mind enters the “in the grand scheme of things” field and picks a flower. Some may call this nihilistic but it isn’t. There’s a difference between gaining perspective in order to minimize anxiety and dismissal because nothing really matters.

Admittedly, every day I look at my life and others’ lives like a diorama. What is this life? How’s it going? What are its main features? Would I stop to look or read the plaque?

Saturday, 11/30/24

My mind attaches too suddenly and easily to things. Mom and I are watching her beloved cooking shows and I’m so close to abandoning all my other hobbies and passions just to make homemade pumpkin ravioli. My eyes rise to the ceiling during a commercial break. Get a hold of yourself.

Sunday, 12/1/24

I met up with friends I hadn’t seen in years. Time picked up where it left off as if they both just thawed from being frozen in time. They remembered the most remarkable things. They were exactly how I remembered them, yet they were also different and I’m sure I was too. I felt like who they reunited with wasn’t really me as if I didn’t know how to perform “me”. I missed them all those years but I miss them even more now that I have seen them again.

After being with them, I met with another friend, The Allegheny River. Always changing. Sometimes freezing on the surface. Yet still just the same. Leaning against my car in the darkness, the air probably 17 degrees, I hated how I felt more comfortable with a river than with people.

Monday, 12/2/24

Knowing that I would be in town, geologist and social media friend Mark Bowers reached out to invite me for a walk. He wanted to show me the Youngwood Wetlands. We had never met in person but I knew he was good people so I agreed to meet with him. We walked on a more suburban section of the 5 Star Trail and we did encounter some wetlands that might benefit from having some boxes installed. Blue Jays scored the air with their calls and we saw a Downy Woodpecker. Buttonbush rose from the wetlands, almost resembling tired mangroves. The trail itself meanders through town, past a community college, following the railroad. I got to learn more about Mark and meet his sweet beagle Ava. I talked to Mark about how I have spent most of my adult life in Central Pennsylvania (why did I capitalize Central?) so I’m less familiar with my home environs. My visits “home” are usually a 24-hour affair because I arrive after work on Saturday and leave on Sunday because Brian works Monday. I am able to stay longer if I drive in a different car, which I should do more often. I miss hiking in Westmoreland and Allegheny Counties. I want to really reconnect with the land there and, of course, people.