Beneficial and Unsightly Objects

Today I lay on my back in the grass of an island, in the middle of a shopping center parking lot. I was later quite grateful I had lain on a blanket once I realized that my grassy location was directly outside of a pet shop and was apparently a place to which their furry little friends frequented quite regularly. I’m normally rather indifferent to a clear sunny day, being as I am so partial to clouds and overcast weather, and today was no exception. This compelled me to reconsider my inconsiderate behavior towards what turned out to be in fact a very charming, subdued blue sky. As I put down my book and looked up, my first observation was that there were two objects (besides the blue sky) that were present in my vision; two objects that I rather quickly began to resent. The most inconvenient of the two was the sun, which hinders even the most sincere attempts at direct appreciation, being that it is quite physically impossible to observe without pain; the other was a very dull and unsightly streetlight post (which I will refrain from calling a “lamp post” on the basis that I’m rather fond of the term and would hate to forever associate the wretched, brown, florescent-bulbed fixture with such a preferable sentiment).

Before true observation of the above sky, I thought to myself how sad and inconvenient that I would be unable to view the previously unappreciated display without these two object’s interference. But as I began to see beyond them, I also began to feel a sort of camaraderie with them and became increasingly grateful for them as though they were the last two material objects in existence. The cloudless sky, the uninterrupted blue, the bottomless upwardly abyss of unchanging and unrelenting color, pulled at my mind in a way that caused me to feel as though I might forget everything else, indeed I may have forgotten, were it not for those two objects. I went on to feel that I might have forgotten my own name were it not for the additional recurring interference of a light breeze blowing my hair in front of my face, hence obstructing my view, and reminding me that I too was observing the scenario, I was not some substance merely floating in it.

Here I lay down hoping to be pleasantly enraptured with a keener awareness of beauty, but instead I found myself disturbingly entranced in a color that mercilessly captivated my consciousness. The disturbation was not entirely unpleasant, but it did feel rather involuntary.

What’s odd to me was that rather than walking away confused as to how or why the sky, which had been previously only comforting and friendly to me, had so quickly become mystical and alluring to me for some unforeseeable end, I walked away feeling grateful for the mundane, unsightly objects, that while bearing the weight of disappreciation continue to protect the unsuspecting little conscious mind from an overindulgence in the abstraction of the color blue.