Imagine that you are born into a world in which there are only two dimensions. Length and breadth. There is no colour, and things are either black or white. The world is fascinating, endlessly stretched in its distance to cover, people to meet, food to try, things to learn, experiences to encounter. Remember that you have your five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These you wield to bring in new experiences… you are like a spice trader on the Silk Road, where each day your spice changes form and value in the new things you barter for – beads, glass, ivory.
One day you overhear some traders talking about a new dimension - DEPTH. They speak of it with awe, with wonder. It is no longer merely distance you travel in one direction (or two, if you count the reverse). But distance, any direction. You close your eyes tightly shut, so that in the darkness of your mind where you imagine wings and flight, gills and trenches at the bottom of the sea, you can just barely reach out to…
Your eyes flutter open and depth has become a reality. Directionless becomes a possibility. Along with it comes a realization – you can turn around and around – 360 degrees. Whoa. While previously you could only look forward or backwards, now there is left and right, east and west.
Along with the depth comes a marvelous transformation to the spread of blacks and whites you know. Suddenly you discover that there are the greys. Now the greys are worlds apart from the distance you’ve so far known. The distances are vast, but walk far enough and you end up back where you started from. The greys (on the other hand) are found shooting off the six black bars on a scale – like musical notes striving for higher highs, lower lows, the greys are almost quite a different shade, a new shade. Ineffable, you sigh.
There are others depths too… emotions for one, with its deep of ecstasy and height of despair; intellect for another – one can’t quite ever be too logical or invincible, there’s always a higher mountain to scale to counter the spread of low hills; and… the depth of distance that you can’t quite get over. Suddenly you can reach for the stars and dive to cold, fluid depths in the sea.
One day, a little child comes up to you. With the innocence of the young, she looks up to you with trusting eyes and asks: “Why is the sky blue?”
“Blue..?” you repeat, not quite comprehending.
“Yes, blue… like how the sun is yellow like the sunflower and the flowers red, sometimes pink and purple and… and I love the smell of lavender, it matches its colour don’t you think?”
Suddenly you see it. First in your mind’s eye and then like wave that spreads itself out away from you the whole landscape is painted in dashing, shy, bold, bright, dreamy colours.
It then strikes you, that the depth, the colours were there all along… in your heart. It isn’t the surroundings that has changed and evolved, but it is you that has grown.
One day you overhear some traders talking about a new dimension - DEPTH. They speak of it with awe, with wonder. It is no longer merely distance you travel in one direction (or two, if you count the reverse). But distance, any direction. You close your eyes tightly shut, so that in the darkness of your mind where you imagine wings and flight, gills and trenches at the bottom of the sea, you can just barely reach out to…
Your eyes flutter open and depth has become a reality. Directionless becomes a possibility. Along with it comes a realization – you can turn around and around – 360 degrees. Whoa. While previously you could only look forward or backwards, now there is left and right, east and west.
Along with the depth comes a marvelous transformation to the spread of blacks and whites you know. Suddenly you discover that there are the greys. Now the greys are worlds apart from the distance you’ve so far known. The distances are vast, but walk far enough and you end up back where you started from. The greys (on the other hand) are found shooting off the six black bars on a scale – like musical notes striving for higher highs, lower lows, the greys are almost quite a different shade, a new shade. Ineffable, you sigh.
There are others depths too… emotions for one, with its deep of ecstasy and height of despair; intellect for another – one can’t quite ever be too logical or invincible, there’s always a higher mountain to scale to counter the spread of low hills; and… the depth of distance that you can’t quite get over. Suddenly you can reach for the stars and dive to cold, fluid depths in the sea.
One day, a little child comes up to you. With the innocence of the young, she looks up to you with trusting eyes and asks: “Why is the sky blue?”
“Blue..?” you repeat, not quite comprehending.
“Yes, blue… like how the sun is yellow like the sunflower and the flowers red, sometimes pink and purple and… and I love the smell of lavender, it matches its colour don’t you think?”
Suddenly you see it. First in your mind’s eye and then like wave that spreads itself out away from you the whole landscape is painted in dashing, shy, bold, bright, dreamy colours.
It then strikes you, that the depth, the colours were there all along… in your heart. It isn’t the surroundings that has changed and evolved, but it is you that has grown.
posted by zilch at 3:58 PM
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