Picture of the day WAPAT: Through The Giant’s Eye

 

Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, License CC-BY-SA 4.0

 
Imagine the eye that may have rested here, seeing the horizon for many, many miles.  All of the world it must have seen, countless sunrises and sunsets so beautiful it could take your breath away.  Now, however, there is no eye, no evidence of an eye ever being here, and the only eyes that may behold this world are ours. Compared to this giant’s eye, we are tiny, but perhaps that is a wonderful thing, too.

Our eyes are small, as we are, and see small things in that perspective.  To a giant’s eye, a mountain is an equal and yet we behold it with such grandeur and majesty that it can inspire and terror.  A giant would never have need to climb a mountain, for it is the mountain’s equal.  It is not small task for we wee people to climb a mountain and, thus, it is an achievement!  Certainly our lives are much improved by this perspective, yes?  Seeing things in a smaller perspective may help us to see the world in a more beautiful light. Everything is a challenge to overcome and inspires. 

Post-Apocalyptic Flash: Kaylee

Kaylee stopped at a major street in the City, looking about for signs of other people – whether meaning good or ill, it would be best to keep an eye out for human activity and be prepared. This was an enormous place, she’d never been to one of the larger cities. Her family had always stuck to the smaller towns or the countryside, but her mother had fallen ill and they had journeyed to the large City to scavenge for medicines for her. Her brother, Ryan, had been dispatched to search in the opposite direction to search for hospitals or pharmacies that hadn’t been ravaged, yet.  
She looked up to the sky. Almost noon, only a few more hours to search before she would have to turn back if she was to make it back to her family by nightfall. Keeping mental note of the street names, she turned left to continue her search. A few blocks down, she sees the symbol of the red cross indicating a hospital or other medical facility. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, even in the stench of the putrid waterlogged streets around her, she buried the urge to run and looked around cautiously. She walked the perimeter of the building and found no signs of human life, then went in the front door. It looked like most of the place had been ransacked for most of the general first-aid items, but the prescriptions behind the counter didn’t seem to be disturbed. Feeling brave, she hopped over the counter to find the medications she needed. 

Her mother had said that any medications ending in ‘cillin’ or ‘mycin’ would do well, but to look particularly for tetracycline. She hunted the shelves and found many bottles with those names, but when she reached up to grab one, it tripped a wire and a net dropped over her head. Damn! She grabbed out her knife and began to desperately hack at the ropes, hoping to get free in time. Once there was a big enough hole for her to squeeze out of, she wiggled her way out of the net, hopped out of the counter, out of the pharmacy, and down the street.

 In her panic to get away, she made a wrong turn and quickly found herself lost, wandering in the unfamiliar maze.

Post-Apocalyptic Flash: Benny

The world had ended ten days ago. Benjamin knew there wasn’t much point in it, but he wanted to go /home/. To know exactly what had become of the life he’d worked thirty five years to build. He doubted he would ever see his wife or kids again; the kids had all grown up and his wife had been out of town at a conference when the world collapsed. No. Never again.

Benjamin trudged along, climbing over piles of rubble and the debris of civilization, making his way vaguely in the direction of his former home, former /life/. After what seemed like hours — though, really, what is the point of an hour when there aren’t any clocks left, the point of a clock when the time doesn’t matter?– he sat atop a particularly awful pile of ugly gray bricks, the remains of what could only have been a school or prison, he began to laugh hysterically. How could he ever even hope to find his former home, former world, former self when there weren’t any roads left to even navigate anymore? No, better to just leave it be. Everything about Benjamin Smith was gone. Everything and everyone he cared for, buried or otherwise out of reach. He no longer had a country, a family, money, a car, modern conveniences, a status, or an address. Even if he could find a brick of his former abode, it still didn’t have an address anymore. All of it’s just meaningless, best to leave it be. 
Atop the next mound, he spied a miraculously intact piano bench and made his way toward it. Once there, he sat and gazed upon the ruined world, just so many fragments of ended lives. Ended? Yes, just as surely as the life of Benjamin Smith was over, the lives of people the world over had certainly come to an end. Even if the people who had lived beneath the collapsed roof beside him still breathed, the roof wasn’t theirs anymore and they certainly did not belong under it. No, the whole world was gone. No point in scouring what he hoped to be the suburbs for the home of a dead man. 
So, he didn’t. Benny sat on his piano bench and watched the dead rise to build new lives. Hopefully this second life of his wouldn’t end with such uselessness left behind. It was already off to a great start: he’d never sat on a piano bench before.