12.20.2002 - 1:56 p.m.

I was driving this morning, passing over the bridge. Looked sideways like I always do, focusing past the pattern of rainwater on the side window to see the river.

Water is so pretty.

And I wondered briefly how one would paint a scene like that, this grey-washed scene as a backdrop for a shiny fractal window pattern. The perspective would be nearly impossible, as half of the scene�s fascination was in the way the patterns interact; I liked watching my eyes� focus jump between the two planes of images. Maybe a photo would do a better job capturing the different focuses, but it would almost have to be a camera with two lenses, a series of photos with progressively changing focal lengths. Can they do that? It seems like I would have heard of a camera like that. It seems like it would be hard to get two lenses to expose one negative without ruining it.

My brain played with camera mechanics for a while, until I found myself sitting at a stoplight and realized I had started thinking about traffic engineers and whether they had mathematical equations that told them how long a light should be at a particular intersection at a particular time of day. Probably not. Or at least, it�s probably not very straightforward; there are probably computers that simulate that kind of thing. They must collect all sorts of information about residential density, shopping patterns, and places of work, then feed it all into a database along with the sizes of the roads and number of cross-streets. I bet that would be a neat job to have for a summer.

That thought lasted for a few more lights, but then I was thinking about ants, because ants are a lot like people in cars, only ants are both dumber and more efficient. Kind of like chickens, so instinctual that they just get things done without realizing why or how or whether it matters.

Then I wondered, what would life be like if I didn�t understand enough to play with it in my head?

-stonebridge

previous | next