Driving through the prairies at night, you can see literally for miles all around you. The landscape is flat in all directions and it wasn't hard to find this thing in the night. I was grateful that I was able to take my time a little bit and pull over; It was on a drive across Canada, heading East. This was in Regina and I could see this complex FUCKING LIT from like kilometres away... Like a moth to a flame I had to see what this thing was - not your typical city skyline at night. IT WAS FUCKING LIT. Light bulbs on every square foot of that complex. I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. The photographs always find it hard to do justice to the scale of the scene - that is the challenge of the Photographer.
Here is the Co-Op Refinery in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Something about the scale of some of humanities creations just boggles the mind. One of my favourite photographers, Edward Burtynsky does some amazing work on this subject, called 'Manufactured Landscapes' in which he phonographs mans impact upon our always changing world. This refinery is really only a small, small example of that type of thing...
The 'only constant is change' like they say, as of everything that pertains to this 3d-existence here, there is only the illusion of things staying the same... but on an 'atomic' level even, things are always changing, shifting, moving, morphing, corroding, corrupting, decaying - everything is always looking to seek to return to entropy. Everything that we see in this 3d realm we inhabit appears solid and with density... However when considering the elements, the atomic structure of matter, it's pretty much all empty space. I forget the analogy but basically all there really is is empty space, and the electrons, whirring about give the atom it's illusion of taking up space, when really, even the nucleus is tiny, microscopic in comparison with the amount of space that the atom will take up. Add to this that all times are occurring at the same time, just one eternal present moment and in this reality we have the illusion of time going by - it's one of the most convincing things we have today and it's even more so compounded by our modern day distractions, constantly keeping up tapped into the clock, time, which is a man-made thing.
Of course our digital distractions don't always keep us 'in tune with the time' as it's easy to get lost in the whole kaleidoscope of colours and come out of the trance hours later and be like... 'I only came here to check one message' or next thing you know, you've watched the entire season in one go. But whether we're watching time or killing it, the apparent passage of time is not such a simple thing...
Time and clocks are useful for a lot of things, ranging from being able to meet with your friend for coffee at lunch or make the GPS network work - these things would be hard without some sort of discrete, identifiable way of agreeing on navigating the space-time continuum, not just geographically but also agreeing on the 'same time.' I'm rambling here(this whole post has) but time and space are inextricably linked... in the way that we are still seeing the past through our telescopes-and even our eyes themselves. When we look up at the night sky, that light travelling and reaching is has been travelling for thousands of years. In fact, witnessing anything, by the time that light has reached your eyes, whatever you are witnessing is already occurred, however, it seems like it's happening 'now.' It's harder to grasp how this works 'looking into the future' but it does indeed work both ways... It could almost be said that definitely all events and times are occurring at once. Just however, we're so limited in our little 5-sense reality. Just makes you wonder what the hell else is going on out there, with for example, light, is just but a tiny tiny slice of the whole electromagnetic spectrum. And even the light that we can see, we're limited in that. Same with the sounds that we can hear, smells we can smell, etc. I think it's something like the brain filters out like 98% of stimuli - it sort of has to, but it further compounds how little our perception can be, how much our senses can deceive us... not getting nihilistic or anything but there is a great deal of 'info' that never makes it in, we experience such a limited slice of reality! Add to that, everything is always changing, and it's easy to get caught up in the 'fast paced' world and life we're in, surely if these words make it to your eyes you're not some monk sitting up on a mountaintop somewhere. Hope you enjoyed some randomly disparate thoughts all condensed, by thought, into a slow vibration codified in magic sigil forms of shapes and sounds, the words you're reading HERE AND NOW.
Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have a great PRESENT!!!!! 😀
