10,000 Feet Above Sea Level

You ever wonder who measured all of this? They have these rules on planes where they don't want you to take out your photography equipment, well sometimes you gotta break the rules. There were some great opportunities to photograph the "grids" in India and Switzerland. The shots from Switzerland in an earlier Blog entry were really cool but I had this thing called a "wing" in my line of sight so I missed some incredible views as we ascended the mountains, broke through the clouds and reached our cruising altitude. As I looked down like a small child with a crayon, I was inclined to start drawing but those skills never matured in me from childhood. Nevertheless, I reverted to just thinking about my family and friends and what they were doing while I was flying high. Below are some pictures and thoughts of mine from 10,000 feet in the last couple of hours of the flight.

I am too lazy to get up and get my camera from the overhead compartment so you are going to do this imagery on your own. Close your eyes and think of a deep black canvas. Take out a letter opener and spoon and gently but purposely architect a 10,000ft view. For the lakes and rivers, use your spoon but be careful not to go too deep as not to flood the city.

On this to India, trek clear across the world (8,000 miles) you really get a sense of how small and fragile we really are. As I look at the map, grids of the world I have lived and am traversing, we are so small. So much to explore, so much left uncharted and so much to experience. God gave us this world as a gift of love and I am glad he blessed me with the opportunity to see so much of it in my lifetime.

I am looking out at Canada right now and I have an Ariel view of a road that goes on for 50+ miles. How many people are down there, can they hear the jets from the plane and is it lulling them to sleep ever so gently as white noise? Do they even know we are up here so far in the air? Is there anybody down there that we know that we are flying over right now? Are we over top of someone right now who is thinking of us? Someone who we are destine to meet, form a relationship, partnership, build a family with, etc.?

The world is so small and we are so fragile? Is someone down there laughing, crying and telling a bed time story to a young child? Are we literally watching someone die but unable to alert the authorities or do anything about it? Things were meant to go on just as they are without our intervention for now but the world is so small and we are all so fragile. There's a certain fragileness when you think of things this way. The patterns on the ground resemble leafs outlined by the snowy mountains below. The roads or passages if you will appear as if they are supplying or funneling the landscape with the richness needed to paint the artistic landscape below that takes our breath away. I wish you could see how small we really are and understand like I do the fragileness of the situation.

Can our friends, family and loved ones below hear our laughter, see our smiles and sighs of missing them. Is there a child down there who is taking their first step and if I cheer, can they hear me? Is there someone down there on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that could change the course of world events? I fear they could solve it today, bring it to market sooner if they could only see it from my point of view, 10,000 miles up.

Every man and woman was given their own instrument of "world" architecture at birth. Instruments for all sorts of intended and unintended world consequences. Time will tell and has told the story of your architecture. Your family and/or friends know if you've been using or abusing those gifts. Some have figured out that they need to turn over the spoon because they were using it the wrong way. Others have now realized that they left some of their instruments on the table which is the reason for their unhappiness or the answer to why the square peg would not fit the round hole. How small and fragile we really are.

In this global world we live in, we have the opportunity to touch so many lives in so many ways. My colleagues were giving me a hard time during the trip because I spent a lot of time talking to the people of India in the evening when I wasn't shooting. Some of these discussions were to relieve myself of any unbridled arrogance I brought with me from the United States. Other dialogue was to learn more about the culture and provide a little broader or maybe just another perspective and some encouragement. I hope some of the seeds I planted while in India take root. Was I successful? I may never know but I couldn't even contemplate this if I hadn't made the investment towards trying. In the global context of things we really are small and fragile beings but with the Internet and these powerful flying gas cans, I mean airplanes, we have the ability to impact globally and global just isn't for business anymore; I adapted that from the old Florida orange juice commercials.

Everything is not for everybody. Everybody will not bear witness to everything. Everyone will not understand everything I am saying about everybody but for those who do figure out what I am trying to say to everyone, I hope your "image processors" i.e. human brain, was able to do the complex math to produce your personal imagery at 10,000 feet above sea level.