One thing I got into in graduate school was the burgeoning field of visual culture, and conversely the culture of vision. It wasn't the best book, but the most mind-blowing book I read was a short little thing by Johnathan Crary entitled Techniques of the Observer. What blew my mind were the parts where he described a transition roughly located in the early 19th century, when scientists (or perhaps more accurately, natural philosophers) started realizing that sensory information is not simply received but is processed within the body, and that processing is subject to manipulation. In short, vision is subjective. Crary, an art historian by training, points out that this discovery was traditionally credited to Impressionist painters, but he instead credits it to early physiologists who first became aware that the process of observation itself affects the thing being observed.

While it's a cool book that I'd recommend to anyone, all of this is really a long-winded prologue to something I noticed a few months after moving back to Pennsylvania from L.A., which is that I see differently now. In Los Angeles, I learned to constantly look up--everything in L.A. has a backdrop, whether it's the Santa Monica Mountains, the ocean, palm trees against the horizon, or what have you. Taking in the scenery always means looking at the backdrop in addition to looking at the ground level.

Since I've been back home, I see all of the familiar landscapes in a new light, largely because I now look higher against the horizon. I notice creek beds previously unseen, I see the backs of buildings through tufts of trees, I notice a hillside in a background where I previously only saw foreground, etc. This effect has been especially pronounced since about mid-November, when all the trees shed their leaves. In many local towns and along byways I am continually surprised by a glimpse of something in the distance that I have never seen before, or never seen from that angle, or which is much closer than I ever realized. The rolling hill topography of the area and ample tree cover hides these scenes eight months a year, even if you know what to look for.

So while I am tired of heavy coats, cold fingertips, and digging my car out of snow and ice, I feel at least a twinge of ambiguity as I look forward to this spring, because the trees are threatening to bloom, regrew their leaves, and steal away these precious glimpses I have finally seen for the first and what will likely be the only time, since I plan to be far, far away the next time the leaves fall. Spring represents renewal to many, and I feel that I am emerging from a kind of winter hibernation in my own life, hoping that good things begin to blossom for me as I shake off what feels like a deep slumber. But though I am not a poet and I rarely think poetically, the passing of winter has left me with a touch of the elegiac...