The World of Rectangles
After a long string of outdoor days and nights, coming back inside is hard.
I can barely drive when I hit the highway. Here come the first road signs, then the billboards. From now on in, I’m seeing nothing but brittle, sharp edges. No more curved or softened or peaceful shapes. No green spring hills. No sweeping clouds. No waves. Or dunes. Or skeins of sandhill cranes. Sounds morph from the first whispered birdsongs at daybreak to the screeching and snarling of trucks and cars, blaring radios, and a Starbucks-fueled cacophony.
Four walls. It’s all rectangles, all right angles. Spatial relationships and scale seem skewed. My mind and body feel strange, somewhere else. My eyes won’t focus. Even light seems imprisoned.
Welcome back to the world of “private property,” all carved up into squares. Time to get serious, get good grades, grow up, go to work, and invest. Own stuff. Pad your bank account. Watch ICE in their Halloween costumes.
I think we find a rhythm and resonance by walking through wild spaces. Something in the nervous system remembers. That ancient world is so much more, not less, than the one we’ve made. But when one comes back to town, that story grows faint…and is buried by sales pitches.
Curves take journeys, squares are static. Nothing wild stays purely within boundaries. The song of the canyon wren needs the surrounding space to float forth. Music escapes the scales. We can’t just live at Motel 6.
I come to life in a world of waves.
But then I notice that, uh, my camera frames are rectangles, too. Even books and blogs are squarish. So, are words and images held hostage, too? Can spirit still somehow escape from laptops in small rooms…or break the borders of cameras, film, and picture frames?
Interesting question…But yes, of course, it can and does…All day, every day, everywhere.
Maybe something like a string of pelicans holds the key. How can things that look so goofy on the ground be so graceful in flight? Somehow the alchemy of nature—mixed with our own hearts and memories—allows things to wake up and fly right through the walls. And maybe, in a strange way, those “boundaries” are a necessary part of one’s dreams…? Which is kinda like the voyage that then leads to art…?
Some say a camera limits what you see. I think it helps me see and feel more. And, again, I’m especially drawn to the life of waves and curves—their flow, their energy—within the constraints of that rectangular frame. It’s all about pushing and pulling, tension and release. Jail vs. hope. I’m hearing John Hartford’s ‘In Tall Buildings.’ And then The Band’s ‘I Shall Be Released,’ drifting up from the basement of Big Pink.
In a world of manmade facts, we hope for some sort of transcendence, some warmth and wonder, along the way. And sometimes, when lost among the big boxes, we just need to keep the faith. Maybe one hears echoes, like one’s own footsteps, while viewing a landscape print or painting on the wall.
Keep walking through and out of that frame. Or fly—just like those pelicans.
By Scott Atkinson
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