Playing Fair and Being Kind

WE ARE ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE

In case you didn’t notice, we are all uphill as well.

 

Sitting outside and seeing with the only eyes I have the way parts of the earth are put together. I see that the roadside flowers that have infiltrated my perennial garden are demonstrating their artistic worth. A photo I captured recently illustrates this nicely. The flowers are the asters that grow everywhere along the side of the roads locally. The flowers are produced on tall stems but are about half the size of the usual ones one sees in Maine. In the photographs these asters look like small fireflies lifting themselves above the other glowers in my garden. In the half light of the dusk hours they appear as small lanterns hanging by threads from the sky above. The petals of these smallish asters catch enough of the dwindling light to furnish a glow for the rest of the garden. But other than that, they introduced me to another aspect that I never really thought of heretofore.

When I examine the photo with them in it I notice that they are arranged in such a way to show the curvature of the earth. It is prominent after one has this pointed out. (I just happened to see the curvature by accident. Lucky me.) The group of asters describes a definite spherical shape that mimics the earth’s shape. No flat earth for me! I now can look around me as I sit out and see clearly there are no straight lines anywhere. Of course, we all know that I’m sure. But what we hardly ever notice without someone pointing it out is that there are only curves and even thought they exist there are still those disappearing points that our art teachers always made sure we know about. The disappearing points all curve as well!

Here is where I catch on fire. Everyone in the world is on top of the world. Maybe not financially or structurally or in the power grid but just by being on the face of the earth. Every point on a sphere is the outermost point in some local directions. Using the science that speaks of local vertical, every line from the center of our earth that passed directly through the surface describes a line pointing away from earth toward outer space. Much like a sea urchin. That point on the surface is the highest local place that anyone can be on earth.

If you stand on the point of exit of such a line from the center of the earth that shoots out into space you are standing on top of a hill. Everyone around you is down hill from you! As I perch on the lawn chair on my deck at The Castle I see the surrounding trees all are getting smaller and lower in height the further away they are from me. In every direction. I look left and see the trees are getting lower. I look right and I see the edge of the island and the cove are lower than I am even though the trees on the neighboring island look a bit higher. Even then the trees are definitely smaller directly proportional to their distance from me. I’m guessing they are down hill also. I am on the top of the earth!

Ah! But so are you! We are all on top of the world no matter where we stand, sit, lie, crouch, or dance.
Well, that’s all I can come up with for the moment. I hope you understand this is the type of thought that propels imagination, poetry, writing and communication of all kinds. I find I can sit and let the world come to me no matter where I am. Someday I will tell you about my brief rest stop for a lunch in Savannah, Georgia. Once I discovered the concept of sitting the world kept coming to me. It wouldn’t stop. I never have to go looking anymore.

Peace.
G. M. Goodwin
15 July 2018