Second Floor City

Posted by Raul on April 30, 2010

Walking everyday the same streets and passing through the same buildings in the same city becomes the norm for most of us.

We always look ahead and walk with thoughts in our heads that keep us busy with the everyday life’s tasks and worries.

What we always see is the same perspective ahead and behind when we turn around to see what’s behind us, yet we never look up.

Granted, it is very difficult to walk forward while looking up without tripping and falling or hitting something or someone.

But what if we stop for a moment and change our field of vision from horizontal to vertical? What if we take a brief tour with our eyes and sweep the buildings around from a level above ten feet and up? Have you done that?

Every time I do that I discover a completely new city that I’ve never seen before, even if I’ve lived in the same place for many years and walked the same path time after time.

The windows, the shapes, the accumulated dust and bird’s “signatures” There are so many things I never see when in a hurry walking while keeping the same field of vision at ground level. Another city appears in front of me and I feel like a visitor, a stranger in a familiar place.

The “second floor” of the city becomes visible and everything is new and unknown.

It is even funny if I try to identify where I am in the city just by looking at the top of the buildings from the ground. With a ground level vision the memories of many years help me identify where I am and find my way around, but with the new vision of the vertical plane to the top of the buildings there are no memories to recall and it becomes very easy to get completely lost.

Just give it a try next time you are walking the same streets for the “n” time. Stop and look up for a couple of minutes and discover all that was always there yet you never saw before.

Discover what maybe you see in other cities when you are touring and what tourist coming to your city see that you don’t. Then try to identify by memory where you are and which buildings to follow to get somewhere else.

It is fun to see and discover a new city within the same old city just by lifting the field of vision a couple of degrees from the ground level to watch the “second floor” that we usually never took the time to see before.

Raul

Time Running Away

Posted by Raul on April 23, 2010

I’ve spent the past month working in a customer’s car that was a real lemon! First it was about finding the parts at a good price, then taking them to the machine shop for repairs, to finally putting all together to make it run again…new life for an old, battered engine.

No time to get in this blog to post something; no time to even think of an idea, concept or perception to write about. Now the car is gone and happily running the streets while I get back to the computer and check thinks around the blog.

So far about 70 spam comments in the spam folder and an absence of more than a month from my part (sorry!) Truly time is a runaway when we become busy on other stuff.

So (finally) the time has come to write again and post in this blog and let’s hope no more lemon cars in the area for some time.

Summer is coming! (So they say; it’s been raining for three days now) and with it the possibility of some running around with the Isetta and the opportunity to see more of the outside world and its strange shape and configuration (just kidding! I’ve spent way too much time indoors lately)

How about the movement of time inside a box? It really seems to go at a different rate compared with the outside time, although is just a personal perception and not a fact, still is a reality for everyone many times throughout life.

We spend a good deal of time in a room working in a project and then when we go outside it feels like we were sort of time travelers arriving to a strange location; the weather might be different (sunny or rainy), the time of the day has changed at a different proportion compared with what was expected and we feel tired and dizzy and somehow completely out of place.

Time seems to be moving at a different speed outside compared with inside and we have no control on the situation. Or do we?

How about moving on purpose at a different speed just for the fun of it? Like when we purposely over sleep and wake up knowing we didn’t move in time yet outside time kept running, so we can find ourselves a little bit in the future at once without the wait of walking the minutes.(I told you I’ve spent too much time indoors lately!)

Raul