Claude Monet said he didn’t paint things, only colours. Surf film maker Mickey Smith says he sees the world in angles and lines. Matrix hero Neo realises his destiny when he looks past the ‘constructed world’ and sees the code behind it. Since Maria ‘stopped taking photos and became a photographer’, I watch her peering out the window, looking past the scenery and scanning for interesting permutations of light.
The sequence of hours in the car offers endless opportunities to play mind games. The obvious things to look at include the intense beauty of the colours and landscapes. But at one stage I imagined I was an engineer. (not a long stretch for my family with my dad, older brother and son all in the profession – heck what happened to me?) Instead of seeing a road I saw the handiwork of a designer and the competence of construction. Signs became someone’s manufacturing and installation skill. I wondered about the seat I was sitting on and ergonomics and upholstering expertise behind it. I changed the gears and marvelled at how some Japanese engineers conceived of this 1989 Patrol drive train that sits in a 4WD but makes it feel like an unbreakable little truck.
Clearly, too much think time on hand! But it did remind me of the power of perspective and how we all see the world slightly differently. Not only that but how we can choose to free ourselves from the perspective that dominates our thinking if we so choose. Indeed, for us, our commitment to live simply and outdoors in a caravan is thoroughly about choosing a vantage point in contrast to our urban professional way of being. And so I wonder what the world will look like, and what will become more important over the next few weeks.
... and if all that is too high brow; "Heck I hope the surf conditions are good and I can find the right head space to do all the work I need to do while we're in the winter paradise that is Byron Bay."