Overloaded

My pal Tony, over at the CWC posted this great piece today. In it, he muses:

"You reach a certain age, and you begin to wonder how come you never paid attention before, why you never noticed that with each change of season, your life becomes less and less about living, and more and more about something else."

Then I just popped over to The Tyee, and found this great post from James Glave, in which he writes:

"I want my experiences and places and purchases to feel honest, comfortable, deliberately human-scale, authentic."

These subjects are also on my mind of late, and I wonder: Is a collective western-world shift occurring?

The view from here

As a short person, I’ve always been aware of my surroundings and how things are not made for me: office chairs never fit, cupboards are always too high; items I want at the supermarket or the library always seem to be on the shelf I am just inches shy of reaching.

Perhaps because I come from a highly wheelchair-accessible city, or because I have many friends with limited mobility, when I travel I’m often conscious of a city’s lack of accessibility. For instance, last spring in Montreal I was deeply disappointed by how wheelchair unfriendly the city is; only becoming aware of it whilst hauling some cumbersome luggage from the train to the metro.

But Kevin Connolly’s recent photo project has me reflecting on some things I don’t regularly think about. Connolly, a 22-year-old Montana artist and athlete was born without legs, uses a skateboard as his main mode of transport. His perspective from his close-to-the ground camera lens, documenting how people look at him, is a reminder of what we often don’t consider:

"Aside from the enjoyment of working on a challenging photo project, I also got the chance to skateboard some pretty crazy locales. Tokyo and Zurich were probably my favorites due to the immaculate sidewalks. However, most of Europe posed a problem that I hadn't considered upon leaving: cobblestones. Those evil little buggers…tore my skateboard apart and created a terrible racket anytime I would go anywhere… I've never seen such nasty cobblestones as those in Romania."

(Image: Kevin Connolly)