Life on the Antipodes

A glorious day.
  March 3, 2002

A friend flew in from three thousand miles away, for a day, on a whim, just like that.  As if someone flipped a cosmic switch, the familiar crisp halogen semi-darkness which pollutes the peaks of concrete and glass—the heights I scale every working day—was washed away by a flood of sunlight, and we three bystanders were left to marvel at a living picture of paradise before us.  There was an ocean breaking against a shore far down below.  There were old, tired, green mountains which held us up to the dizzying sight of aquamarine meeting azure, far away, where water became sky.  We lay on our backs on the edge of a rocky crag, let our heads fall backward and looked at the world upside down.

“You know,” H. said as the three of us took in the grassy undulant heaven dangling inverted trees over the bottomless blue earth, “do you guys get this feeling that it’s really weird that the world is round?”

We silently surveyed the flat line of the horizon, an infinity away.

“I think it would be even weirder if the world were a cube,” I said sparking a round of laughter.

“That corner would be a bitch!” said H., catching her breath.

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