Perspective changes everything. If I put my hand up close to my eye I can see age and wrinkles. If I move my hand as far away as possible I can see a hand that can write and the landscape behind it.
This past week we finally went up Table Mountain, one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It was everything the adjectives suggest ‘awesome; wonderful; amazing; stunning’. Words are never enough.
But it was also a symposium in perspective.Yesterday we finally bought a new camera. (Our old one has been worn out by our incessant ‘clicking for the past years and had got to the stage where it was taking a little afternoon nap between pressing the shutter and taking the photo).
And, predictably we took loads of photos from Table Mountain, but I was struck by two photos in particular.
Here is Jane sitting at the top of the mountain looking out to sea. In the background is a tiny, benign looking island. Green with white sandy bays and a bright white area inland. But actually it is Robben Island. Nelson Mandela’s prison for 18 of his 27 years.
Viewed from those years of mindless labouring in the lime quarry on that island it only looks like a prison sentence that will last a lifetime, eyesight destroyed by the glare, a world contracted into a few acres. But, from the top of Table Mountain it is just a small part of a much bigger landscape, a dash between the Atlantic Ocean and the ‘new world’ beyond and the ancient shores of Africa beneath us.
Here is a photo of a boat in the distance. So many boats sail on these seas. But this isn’t just ‘any boat’. It's the MAPFRE boat, finishing 7th in the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. A team of 9 people, knitted together as a seamless unit of human potential, racing the ocean for the past month from Alicante to Cape Town. Each of the crew are away from the people they love and the people who love them, the people who are knitted into their life tapestry, who they will be separated from for the next year.
When we spotted them they were just being joined by a tiny flotilla, escorting them into the celebrations awaiting them in the harbour. From the isolation of the “team of 9” amidst a seemingly endless ocean, to the bustle, hype and carnival that awaits them on the shores of the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. From a micro community of the wild sea, soon to be absorbed into the macro community of the worlds media. And then they suddenly go away on their own to their own private room for the first time in a month. But in this moment of the photo, from this perspective of Table Mountain, just a faceless boat on silent waters.
And then there’s this photo. Not taken from Table Mountain. Jane and I have set up a table tennis table in the wine cellar where we are staying so we can have some fun amidst the seriousness of life. Here is me, in the wonderful chandelierd-space of this very old wine cellar, now boutique sought-after wedding venue, losing all perspective down in the muck and dust under a cabinet trying to find a lost ping pong ball.
Life is like that.
Life is actually like all three photos. It just depends where I’m standing at any one time as to what life looks like in that moment....zoomed in: I’m in the moment, focused, intense, narrow gaze and poised for action....or zoomed out: I’m open, un-fettered, holding few answers and seeing the ‘bigger picture’. Life needs both.
- TW
