An Upside Down World

12/29/2023

As a child, I would sometimes rest my body on the couch or bed and drop my upper half and head close to the ground, hanging there with blood rushing towards my skull. Not only was this physical sensation interesting, but more provocative was the way the world looked.

Often I did this activity, and as I hung there, I thought about the pros and cons of a world being upside down like the way I saw it then. I loved how organized and clean the rooms looked upside down, the now white empty floors, a minimalist look.

I questioned whether or not I liked the TV that high up on the walls this way though- along with the lack of squishy places to sit as the furniture was now too far to reach. The more profound scenes I captured while being upside down was when my mom would vacuum- seeing mom vacuum the “ceiling” was quite entertaining.

I called this illusion an upside-down world.

A manipulation in perspective, a rotation of an image, a purposeful illusion.

Sometimes it all feels like an illusion.

For some images, I like to imagine the laws of gravity still exist, with the sky or river being this airy abyss, needing to walk carefully on the wires to avoid falling.

Some images feel distorted enough that I cannot envision the laws of gravity, and I am actually somewhere else, a fragment of reality.

Some images look right-side up, the world is sometimes a mirror.

Some images challenge me to break my concrete perceptions of what things look like. The railroad specifically makes me frustrated as I want to try and see it differently, but my mind keeps attaching it to what I already know.

I just find it interesting, all the ways the world can exist in a matter of perspective. If there is any right way to look at things, and what would happen if we destroyed certain fixed concepts that ground our baseline of reality, where would we be then? Upside down, right side up, sideways, who knows?

“Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception, and ignorance, but it isn’t -it’s human.” — Desiderius Erasmus

“Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.” — Publilius Syrus

“Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self.” — Wayne Dyer

“A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.” — Georges Bernanos

“After a crisis, we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.” — Daniel Kahneman

Quotes from https://everydaypower.com/illusion-quotes/