Show me the way
Shanghai, China, May 2007 [Click to enlarge]
When you look up in Shanghai, you notice the preponderance of wires hanging over your head. They seem so haphazardly strung, almost as if they were installed by a part-time electrician rushing to finish his work before reporting to his regular full-time gig installing hydraulic clutches at the scooter factory.
The first time I noticed this, I was a little nervous. 220 volts of electricity running through a rat's nest of cables can have that effect, I guess. But over the next few days, sights of randomly installed wires simply faded into the background, just another touchstone in a landscape so very different from the one I was used to.
Your turn: Look up. What do you see?
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11 comments:
I'm sitting by my desk, so when I look up, I see the curtains. They are drawn to keep the Sun out of the room. There are flowers on the curtain.
Electric wires above one's head can give one nightmares, I agree.
That makes me panic. We both posted shots of looking up Carmi. Imagine that! :)
I see a popcorn textured ceiling. Funny how even ceiling textures go through trends... back in the 80's popcorn was what it was all about. Now people like the smooth look of a flat or "knock-down" ceiling. So much so that they will make the horrendous mess of scrapping the popcorn away. (My kitchen is still recovering with little bits of white popping up here and there.) Anyway... that's what I see.
Looking up, I see pictures of my children arranged atop the hutch in my office at work.
Thanks for making me look there today.
Right now? I see the two trophies my next cubicle neighbor has on top of his cabinet. He's a go cart racer and recently won two big races in that world. Each is an eagle taking flight and each is heavy too. I call them his Murder, She Wrote trophies because they look like the type of weapon used spontaneously on the show.
The wires in China are interesting. I've seen similar photos taken in India, and they have a bad problem with folks hooking up their own illegal cables to run power to their homes and apartments. I wonder if that's part of what that snake pit of cables you saw in China is?
the scene looks like straight from India's streets...
I look up above my desk and I see shelves busting out of the seams with information and books.
I look up to my right and I see wall, a few pictures i drew on postits and stuck to that wall.
I look up to my left and i see the top of the doorway, the top of an internal window and lights.
I look up behind me and im scared. A towering sight of tall and very full filing cabinets, with boxes and boxes on top loom over me as i pretend to sit here not scared.
If I dont turn around, I cant see it, and if i cant see it, it cant fall, and if it cant fall because i cant see it, i'm okay...
I'm afraid to look up... because the seagulls are looking down.
An electric fan on the top of my desk, my niece's framed photo, some envelopes, a goldfish plant. Then higher, the ceiling, a white textured ceiling.
All those wires would freak me out! That is some mess! Wonder how they even know where to start when something quits working in all that mess??
And I thought our power lines were sometimes a bit too much! My, my!
Before I was married, I worked in Haiti. After our marriage we took a trip to Haiti so that Don could see where I had worked and meet the wonderful people that I had worked with.
My husband, the electrician, was always looking up in wonder at sights just like this one. He was both amused and in awe.
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