Perspective

Photo: Zoe Hart
A solitary rope and a blue door...what is behind the door, what adventures has the rope participated in...I leave it to your imagination, perspective...Zawia, Haute Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Matt Kowalczyk (yes that's how you spell his name, I didn't just punch random keys on the keyboard, and imagine trying to spell that out to a French person...not easy)....back to Matt, my client for the week, here to climb Mont Blanc and take in the views in honor of his non-profit organization Climb For Kids (you can read more on Climb For Kid's mission on www.climbforkids.org).

Ok, there was no thread on where that was going, so now that you know who Matt is, on we go.

Matt and I settled into the Torino hut for an early afternoon nap. After a nice bimble across the Vallee Blanche, traversing from Chamonix, France, to the Italian side, with a few eye opening crevasses and snow bridges to cross, we decided to take advantage of the quite hut while it lasted, before the snorers invaded our room.

Dark, billowing, black clouds, that grew from whisps, to horse tails, to towers, floated in and out of the sky as the light refracted through our window like a prism.

"How can you sleep right in the middle of the afternoon? And if you sleep now, will you sleep tonight?" Matt wondered.

"Ahh, but the hut, in the afternoon is the best place to sleep. There is nothing else to do, but read, sleep, or listen to music, pod casts or books on tape. I take the opportunity to have no "to do list" guilt, and catch up on all the sleep I miss the days I wake up at 2am to start climbing."

A smile crept across Matt's face, he understood.

Before the book fell onto my face, and my breath slipped into a rythym only achieved in a dreaming state, I was reading a book called the Spell of the Sensuous by David Amram. The book is full of interesting philosophies, concepts, mental meanderings, some of which I believe in others which interest me but I haven't yet formed a perspective on, and others I don't buy at all. But fundamentally his discussion is about Ecology, and the human connection to the earth, nature, animals, all that exists outside of us as individuals, all that we affect with our daily choices, all that we experience and experiences us.

I find this interesting because Nature is essentially my job, or being in it, and interacting with it, and experiencing it.

He discusses Merleau-Ponty's description of perception
'as a mutual interaction, an intercourse, "a coition, so to speak, of my body with things."

Abrams discusses the argument of Science versus Phenomenology
'Phenomenology....would turn toward 'the things themselves,' towrd the world as it is experienced in its felt immediacy. Unlike the mathematics-based sciences, phenomenology would seek not to explain the world, but to describe as closely as possible the way the world makes itself evident to awareness, the way things first arise in our direct, sensorial experience.'

I don't want to delve too far today, but these thinkings made me question and evaluate how I perceive the world around me, specifically the natural world, and how I interact with it. My impact, my contribution, my life.

So I leave you with the task of thinking about the same thing, can you do more, can you take less (can I?)...at least think about it...I will as well.