CRISIS OF PERSPECTIVE

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

I was staring, out the window of the train, at the river. I'm not sure how to say this in a way that doesn't sound stupid but my eyes were following the shore line as the train slid north. I was just sort of absentmindedly daydreaming--is that a redundancy? Suddenly there were a couple of men on a rock fishing about 200 feet away from me. Now that there was someone there to provide a sense of scale I realized that the rocks that formed the river's bank were actually much larger than I had thought, or larger at least than either my eyes had seen them or my brain had processed that vision.

It felt altogether disorienting to realize that I was much smaller than I had thought; that much more insignificant. It had happened to me again (but in reverse?) before that when I was crossing the bridge at a perpendicular to the rail line and seeing the train coming north at the same time. Something about being able to see the train all at once, this anemic little worm which from above looked to be silently flowing along side the river, a narrow trail behind a raindrop gliding down a pane of glass. The feeling of superiority is unavoidable looking down at the tiny cars with their sad commuter cargo being trundled home to a period of rest before being plugged back in going the other direction. Of course I'm more important--I'm coming home from the mall.