My Perception

1. Night.

When I sit outside at night I look at the stars and wonder.  I think about the great distance between Earth and any given star, and contemplate the possibility of life outside our solar system.  I imagine different scenarios of what it would be like if Earth was visited by extra-terrestrials.  How would people react?  Have they already visited?  Does the government know something they’re not telling us?  There are no conclusive answers to any of these questions, so I am constantly wondering.  I see people walking in the street, at the mall, driving in traffic and I wonder whether any of them are aliens.  Maybe they are on some kind of secret mission sent to infiltrate our society.  Maybe they’re keeping an eye on us, making sure we’re staying out of trouble.  Maybe they have more hostile intentions.  I think about the vast distance one would have to travel to get here. How would they do it?  Are they traveling at the speed of light?  Are they traveling through different dimensions?  Are they time travelers? Are grey aliens an evolved version of us? Again, there are no answers to these hypothetical questions.  I wonder about what our eyes are capable of seeing, and what else could be lingering in the electromagnetic spectrum.  Are there waves of light that we are not capable of seeing, much less detecting?  Are there beings around us that we don’t know about?  I am constantly asking myself these questions.  Perhaps I have seen far too many science-fiction films, but asking myself these questions keeps my life interesting.  I devour any information I acquire related to aliens and UFOs, and there is no definitive conclusion to be reached that will put my mind at ease.  I enjoy dreaming about these things.  I like to believe that there is more going on around us than what we initially perceive. 

2.  Crime.

I live in the city.  I grew up in the country.  When I was a child, we had acres of woods behind our house where I would spend the majority of my time.  I enjoy the tranquility of walking around a quiet, wooded area.  That quietness is lost to me now, replaced by the constant sounds of urban civilization.  The neighborhood I live in probably would not be considered the best.  I’ve heard gunshots.  I’ve heard bloodcurdling screams.  I’ve heard the sirens of EMTs responding to incidents.   I’ve read the newspaper the following day to attempt to understand what happened.  I’ve never understood how anything could drive people to such extreme violence.  When I read about incidents in the paper, it seems so petty.  Guy One talks to Guy Two’s “girl.”  Guy Two becomes jealous and pulls out a handgun.  Guy One gets shot.  Rationally, it doesn’t make any sense, but these things happen all the time.  True crime is endlessly interesting to me, but I don’t want to be a part of it.  I don’t want to live around it.  I enjoy watching violent films, but I do not enjoy seeing violence in real life.  It’s an interesting paradox, and I can’t explain why I get sick to my stomach when I see a video online of a real person being beheaded, but I can watch a film like The Human Centipede without even wincing.  It could be some sort of primal instinct.  For thousands of years our ancestors had to fight to survive, and death was very much a normal part of life.  There is an animal inside of each and every one of us, ingrained in our DNA.  So maybe it’s some kind of a release, watching violent films, a way of “blowing off steam” for the animal inside of me.  Taking that same idea into account, it could also explain why I enjoy being outdoors so much, away from the city.  We’re not meant to be stacked like Jenga blocks in apartment complexes.  We’re not meant to live so close to one another.  The further our society progresses; the more we are alienating ourselves from the planet that provides us our home. 

3.   Cinema.

My favorite place in the world is the movie theater.  I love the smell of fresh popcorn, the movie trailers, the excitement of seeing a film on a big screen, and the moment the lights dim when the film is about to start.  In most cases, if the film is good, I walk out of the theater feeling energized.  I feel like a new person.  I look at the world differently, given the experience I just had.  I kind of view life as being like a film.  There are scenes that occur throughout my day.  The first scene is going through my usual morning routine: Stumble out of bed, brush my teeth, go downstairs, get a cup of coffee, smoke a cigarette, and eat a bowl of cereal.  The next scene is driving my car to wherever it is that I’m going, so on and so forth.  The conversations I have with people are like dialogue in my “life-film.”  I imagine how they would look if I could carry a camera everywhere, and had time to set it up.  If I’m smoking a cigarette, I imagine how it would look if I were watching a movie.  There are endless possibilities.  Would I try to get as close as possible, perhaps with a macro lens, so that the tip of the cigarette fills the entire frame when I light it?  Alternatively would I use a wide-angle lens to show myself, and everything else around me?  I’m always thinking about these things.  I think about the concept of time, and ponder whether it is real or not.  Is time a human invention?  If we were immortal, and had all the time we could ever want, would we still use it?  Time never seems to exist in the movies, unless it’s an important plot point.