Window Perspectives

As I sat reading Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane this afternoon, the day after completing my sketch, this passage made me smile as I remembered the same tree that I drew just yesterday -- the sway, the creak, and the purple sky made me wonder if he wrote it just for me:

I sat on my bed, and stared out of the window.

My bed was pushed up hard against the wall just below the window. I loved to sleep with the window open. Rainy nights were best of all: I would open the window and put my head on my pillow and close my eyes and feel the wind on my face and listen to the trees sway and creak. There would be raindrops blown onto my face, too, if I was lucky, and I would imagine that I was in my boat on the ocean and that it was swaying with the swell of the sea. I did not imagine that I was a pirate, or that I was going anywhere. I was just on my boat.

But now it was not raining, and it was not night. All I could see through the window were trees, and clouds, and the distant purple of the horizon.

How many times had I fallen asleep with that singular view from my bedroom window? Since moving to Singapore six years ago, we have lived in three homes; before that, Michael and I had bought and sold two houses and lived in four; if I think of every home I’ve lived in, certainly my childhood home gave me that singular view the longest.

My perspective from that window was always of a tree that would dance, scraping its nails in, oddly, the most soothing way, against my window. When it was cold outside, the candle for the Christmas season would warm one side of the glass while frost would creep up the other side. Snuggled in my bed, I had a view of the world that nobody else had.

I’d imagine that my view of the world was so far above that I was looking at the earth in the sky instead of the moon. If could gain that perspective on my life, I could remove myself enough to see the challenges from afar.

I often tell my students to climb their metaphorical tree for that perspective; if they can see their problems from that higher view, they can be outside of them and removed enough to see things more clearly, more objectively. Sometimes the shift in perspective is all we need.

With that new perspective, we see things that sometimes can be more magical than the reality we perceive.

Perspective on Singapore

Photography is the art form I'm most comfortable with and that's what I used for Scott's book on Perspective. Living in Singapore sometimes overwhelms me with the numbers of people and lack of space. I make sure to find another perspective on Singapore by looking for the green, open spaces when I need to feel space. So, I took a bike ride from Woodlands to Ang Mo Kio Bishan Park and captured these scenes. (I have to admit that Doug helped me post process the photos to get the vibrant colors that you see.)

Playing with Perspective

One thing I love about art is how it allows me to live beyond my own experience.  Artists invite me to see the world differently by exposing me to their images, designs, and ideas.  In turn, I always come away with greater awareness, deeper appreciation, and more compassionate empathy.  In short, I am changed for the better.  

That's why I chose perspective as my theme.  Through art, our own perspective grows.  And while I can't wait to see what you'll come up with for my sketchbook, I know that our collective images, designs, and ideas will change us all for the better.

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