A Whole New World

Woman on 1950s telephone
Crazy Telephone Lady

Don’t you just hate fakes? Fake people, who pretend they are somebody just ‘cos they’ve got the right clothes on their backs, or the right car in their drive. They can’t just quietly consume; they have to have everyone else know about how superior their life is to someone else’s. ‘Look at me’, their every public move seems to say, I am just so much more important than you. When they wave their phones around and have shouty conversations that’s what they’re at; the poor devils are actually looking for the world to notice them. They don’t really feel they exist until you do notice them, and are oblivious to the fact that you’re hoping a hole in the ground will open and swallow them whole, because they’re just relieved that all the effort of existing has had a pay-off.

sign at cliff edge

Some fake things are OK though. The entertaining stuff that delights and surprises is a kind of gift to humans. I came across this beach panorama recently, when exploring Amsterdam. Not able to get  to an actual beach, I made do very nicely with this fake one, right in the middle of the city. Gulls squawked, breeze blew, fishing nets littered the beach, and everyone smiled as we were all transported in our imaginations by an artist’s 3D construction which fools the eye.