Addicted to Google Earth

I am in my flat. Everything I need to do still needs to be done. My mind is whirring. I have emails to write, bills to pay, friendships to water, work to fret about. Life goals are looming. I can hear the relentless traffic chugging past. This city is too crowded. It is bulging at the seams.

My worries are large. Incessant. Overwhelming. They bind themselves together, morphing into a one big bastard blob. I am suffocating. I need to escape. It is just a few clicks away…OPEN WINDOW.

 

 

I am a thousand feet up, floating above my flat. I have broken out of my prison cell, smashed through the walls that encase me. I look down at the building where me and my bastard blob live. It looks tiny. My street is toy town with matchbox cars. I am no longer in ear shot of my mobile phone or my email notifications. I can breathe again.

As I reverse into the sky my inner world starts to disappear as the one around me starts to reveal itself. On the ground you feel boxed in by the concrete surrounding you. In the air you can see why. We live in a maze of our own making.

I am no longer trapped inside my own head. The mental whirring is slowing. I am not looking in. I am looking out. I can see my neighbourhood. I think about all the people living down there in their little boxes the same as me. My worries are already fading. I no longer feel angry.

The din of London is disappearing. The engines, the sirens, the alarms, the voices..all that noise has gone quiet. It is blissful.

A city crammed full of millions of people and I can’t see one of them. Their moans are out of ear shot. Their attitude absent. They are no longer in my face. They have vanished.

One of the busiest cities on Earth now feels still, lifeless. On the ground it never stops. Up here it is motionless. Down there the buildings dwarf you. They enclose you and darken you with their shadows. But from here they are flat, grey, unthreatening.

I can see the edges of a city that never ends. I can see over the prison walls and across to free land. I can see the green growth surrounding my concrete pen. Pushed back by man, but lurking, waiting. Ready to reclaim the land at any given moment.

I see the coast for the first time. I can see the water surrounding our country. I live on an island? Why is that so easy to forget?

The insular perspective of my nationality collapses off the coast, drowning in the surrounding water. There is more. So much more…

…a  whole continent emerges, that we are both part of and separated from. Our isolation seems more apparent.

Britain looks small. Insignificant. I can’t hear or see any of its 60 million inhabitants. I am miles in the air. I see a landmass defined by borders that aren’t really there. I feel the flatness disappear as the curvature of the giant sphere I live on starts to reveal itself…

My first glimpse of space. It takes my breath away. It is glorious.

I am floating above the Blue Marble. I am Superman. I am Neo. I look down at my home planet with ethereal ambivalence.

Every scream, every phone ring, every car horn..every noise across the entire planet and nothing but silence. Absolute peace. It is magnificent.

My entire world looks small. I don’t even remember who I am. My problems are non-existent. Even the realisation of my own insignificance is lost in the mass of nothingness that engulfs our minscule planet.

I live on a giant orb locked in a loop around the sun. It is massive and hurtles through space at a vast speed. I MUST not forget this!

On the ground there is no room to move. Out here there is just empty space. Down there is life. Out here is nothingness. I would choke to death in a second. This is no place to live….CLOSE WINDOW.

I am back in my flat. Staring at my computer screen. My thoughts return but I am calmer. More at ease. I can carry on with my day. I wish I could feel the movement of the Earth underneath my feet. Then I would remember where I was and what I was on. I will try to keep this perspective but I know it won’t last long. The whirring will inevitably return..