(196) Desk Calendars
I love desk calendars. There is something so satisfying about being able to rip off each page, kind of like being able to physically cleanse the mistakes and trials of the day and start the morning next anew. It's refreshing. And if the calendar is especially nice, it's also nice to see what new picture the next day will be.
Someone put a new desk calendar on a shared desk at my workplace. Fitting, since today is the beginning of the new year. It's very small, filled with professional photos from Europe, and it's glossy and shiny and everything a desk calendar should be. Now, I could do the normal responsible thing and wait for each new day to find out what new scene lies in wait, but I work on the weekends, and undoubtedly someone will rip off a page and throw it away during the week. I'll be missing a lot of good stuff. So I decided to have a peek myself, and very carefully (so as not to loosen any pages) flipped through the entire booklet.
It was very pretty. A lot of photos focused on architecture -- old castles or aquaducts or well-known structures like the Arc of Triumph or the Eiffel Tower or the glass pyramid at the Louvre (which alone took up three separate days). There were also pictures of supermarket foods (which was a little funny) and many pictoral scenes of houses, with an special focus on flowers and gardens and whatnot.
But my favorites really lay with the ones that didn't show so much human interference. I like photos that speak of quietness and calmness, like a pasture let wild, or new-fallen snow, or flowers growing in the midst of abandoned ruins. I loved the photo of smoky blue ranges in French Basque, Aquitaine; the fresh, untrodden snow in the circular fountain and garden or Chateau de Chenonceau, Loire Valley; the bright reds and greens of shutters, poking out of whitewashed houses nestled in green Midi-Pyrenees mountains; the red brick rooftops of a town in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, falling down a steep incline into waters of impossibly blue, so far down the waves look merely like ripples; the single glowing foxglove, quietly defiant, growing beside a row of aged-smooth pillars, the ground long covered with greenery.
Viewing these pictures, part of me kind of wishes to see them in person. Who wouldn't like to travel to Europe and gaze upon all their old wonders? But another part of me knows -- it's not enough to just go see. You can look and look at architecture all day, but it won't evict an ounce of wonder and emotion unless you put yourself out there and do more than just view the passing city. You have to search for what you want to see most. So if I go, I'll have to look close, to see the old grandeur of a mountain, the elegance in a sloping roof, the willfulness in a single foxglove. It's hard. I often lose sight of what I want to see most in the crushing surrounding muchness. Sensory overload is dizzying and terrifying, but you must put if aside to find the little beauties.
Someone put a new desk calendar on a shared desk at my workplace. Fitting, since today is the beginning of the new year. It's very small, filled with professional photos from Europe, and it's glossy and shiny and everything a desk calendar should be. Now, I could do the normal responsible thing and wait for each new day to find out what new scene lies in wait, but I work on the weekends, and undoubtedly someone will rip off a page and throw it away during the week. I'll be missing a lot of good stuff. So I decided to have a peek myself, and very carefully (so as not to loosen any pages) flipped through the entire booklet.
It was very pretty. A lot of photos focused on architecture -- old castles or aquaducts or well-known structures like the Arc of Triumph or the Eiffel Tower or the glass pyramid at the Louvre (which alone took up three separate days). There were also pictures of supermarket foods (which was a little funny) and many pictoral scenes of houses, with an special focus on flowers and gardens and whatnot.
But my favorites really lay with the ones that didn't show so much human interference. I like photos that speak of quietness and calmness, like a pasture let wild, or new-fallen snow, or flowers growing in the midst of abandoned ruins. I loved the photo of smoky blue ranges in French Basque, Aquitaine; the fresh, untrodden snow in the circular fountain and garden or Chateau de Chenonceau, Loire Valley; the bright reds and greens of shutters, poking out of whitewashed houses nestled in green Midi-Pyrenees mountains; the red brick rooftops of a town in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, falling down a steep incline into waters of impossibly blue, so far down the waves look merely like ripples; the single glowing foxglove, quietly defiant, growing beside a row of aged-smooth pillars, the ground long covered with greenery.
Viewing these pictures, part of me kind of wishes to see them in person. Who wouldn't like to travel to Europe and gaze upon all their old wonders? But another part of me knows -- it's not enough to just go see. You can look and look at architecture all day, but it won't evict an ounce of wonder and emotion unless you put yourself out there and do more than just view the passing city. You have to search for what you want to see most. So if I go, I'll have to look close, to see the old grandeur of a mountain, the elegance in a sloping roof, the willfulness in a single foxglove. It's hard. I often lose sight of what I want to see most in the crushing surrounding muchness. Sensory overload is dizzying and terrifying, but you must put if aside to find the little beauties.