shifting perspective

on going exploration – 2015 to present

There will come a point in the future where your sensations will fail you in the most spectacular way. This time will come and you won’t even realize—you’ll be sitting in your favorite café, drinking your latte with soy milk, scrolling through your feed, only to look up and see everything around you has changed. Text your friends and family, they’ll still be there; your dog, your toys, sure, but all the places you once knew will be gone. In their stead will be various versions of the same thing…

Your café no longer appears how it once did. Though their lattes haven’t changed, your perspective has shifted. And yet, your favorite corner is still there, with the linen chair and the stand-alone lamp. The barista still dutifully constructs caffeinated beverages with that same care. The counter remains where it’s always been, but there’s something about it. Your curiosity will start to morph, like the brick wall, into something different.

You’ll stumble outside, almost in a daze, to find the street you thought you knew. What a bizarre feeling of almost certainty, a fuzzy recollection of facades—all the colour and shifting! You’ll find yourself mouthing words without sound, turning here and there, a slight panic starting to overcome you.

You’ll rush through the plaza near your apartment and wonder at the water fountain, thinking of the pond you knew to be there. You’ll glimpse the faces of buildings in the process of changing—glass spinning into place; that one shifting, growing taller. Only briefly will you realize everybody else, and wonder at his or her apparent acceptance of this reality. Your heart will begin racing and before you can comprehend what your feet have decided you’ll make for your apartment…

The atrium will be different than you remember; or was that ghostly old architect always naked there? You’ll start to merge memories; returning past thoughts will blur with the ephemeral present. Before even making it up to your apartment, you’ll be overcome with emotions of loss and nostalgia, conflicting feelings of love and hate. This place you knew so well will be gone, replaced with a nearly constant shifting of glass and steel and brick. Outside you’ll wander, and wonder at what has become of things…

You’ll find yourself back at the plaza, by then it’ll be night. A pond will be there like it should, a small reassurance. You’ll find a cigarette even though you don’t smoke, and in looking around at the concert that has sprung up, the people sitting around lazily, half fascinated half uncaring, you’ll begin to forget why you were so worked up. The buildings will swap their faces, or even grow tens of feet taller. Although what you saw there this afternoon won’t be there this evening, or possibly ever again, you’ll try to remember a time before the shifting buildings and fail.