Aerial Reality

There are lots of "realities", but one that offers perspective like nothing else, is an aerial view of where you live. On my computer wallpaper, currently, I have a photograph that someone took of my city. It encompasses the entire area, since our city is very small compared to the others in the greater metropolis. It's small because the people who live in it, determined not to be absorbed by the large municipalities around it. They wanted it for its value as a seaside resort town that draws both national and international interest. Real estate makes it one of the most expensive sites in the country. Before written history, it was a quiet place of aborigines who, without the imported sands of today, knew its head of the bay for gathering sea and land foods in the moderate, friendly climate. Today, prosperity with all of its ups and downsides for the average person, is going through the usual struggles between the rich and the others. One group has money to burn and the other works to keep the traditional ways, places and economy as they have known it for centuries. Unfortunately, as the residential towers go up along with the need for infrastructure to support the expanding population, so do the taxes and costs. Life becomes a sellers and buyers and spenders marketplace. Peace is disturbed. Prosperity enters. Somehow, when looking at this aerial view, it brings into mind, what has happened. There is almost no more space for the little white boxes to go but upwards, as though the need grows vertically like a vigorous weed. The boxes are the homes, apartment buildings and businesses. The green bits here and there, the trees and meadows, are not many. The beaches form a necklace of  walkways, a railroad and concrete rimming the city. Jutting into the ocean is a long structure with a man-made breakwater slanted like the head of an arrow pointing to the vast ocean beyond, and inside it, tiny bits that are the moored pleasure boats. Beyond are other cities and the inlet with lovely pointed mountains behind. It's all peaceful and makes the anguishes, the accomplishments, the victories and defeats of everyday life seem ridiculously tiny. We see no people or vehicles or signs or any of the jetsam of our daily lives. Nothing moves. The viewpoint is thought provoking. We are above all the petty but important details that embroil us, we, the invisible creatures that creep about down there in that tiny place. But from here, we can see beyond to what really matters. How blue the sea is, and how large. While the land is likely teeming and humming, the sea is silent and stable and constant and simply there, as it has been since before Man. The water is the same, the land, the mountains and the air. Matter cannot be destroyed even though it can be changed. The things that will change are the little white boxes and little man made lines and rows and the relatively insignificant bits we see below. They look frail and vulnerable. But then, it's just a picture.