Panoramic Views

In the last 12-18 months I fell in love. With the sun. I work on the 29th floor of my building and have no view obstructions from my floor to the ocean, some 20 miles away. And on a really clear day, granted they are hard to come by here in smoggy LA, I can see the ocean. Yep – a little ribbon reflecting the bright orange sun. I can see it, the LAX air traffic control tower, and out of another window, the Hollywood sign. Yep – Los Angeles laid out before my very eyes. (You won't be able to see the ocean really well in these pictures but it's there- see a bright ribbon of light - that's the ocean. Trust me. )



On the way to work in the morning I pass a lot of things on the train. Luckily I sit next to a window which gives me almost panoramic views. In the movie “Crash” one of the characters says something to the effect of "they put windows on the sides of busses so all the rich folk can see all the poor folk riding the busses." What if we didn’t have these big picture windows on the sides of our mass transportation? We’d see nothing. Life would pass us by, literally, every day and we wouldn’t even see it. I love these windows. I love that sometimes we pass a patch of the earth that hasn’t been over-developed and I get to see the whole sky and some earth below it. I get to see the sun and the clouds and the pictures painted in the sky. The other day I saw a sunset with colors ranging from red to blue to green to purple. It was gorgeous- I've never seen anything like it. And on the one day I didn't have my camera. :(

I guess my point is - instead of stopping to smell the roses sometimes I'd rather stop and stare at the sunset. At least in LA where I see it on the horizon, over buildings, between trees, over the ocean...over what seems to be the end of the earth. And, yes, I know that smog is what makes it such intense colors, but for once, I'm glad it's smoggy. Look for the silver lining - there is something positive in everything (sometimes you just have to squint your eyes and look real hard, but it's there). Sometimes it's hard to do, sometimes I don't want to, or don't have time to - but some day's gonna come when I wish I had. The Sun reminds me - when I see it's beauty - that I do need to slow down, think positively, take in the beauty around me - even here in smoggy, over-crowded, over-developed LA. Because you're only as happy as you make your mind up to be.


(You can scroll over the slideshow to play again, go forward, go backward, or go to the web address of the pictures.)