The Geometry of Being Small

When I was seven, my uncle took me to the top of a tall building in the city. I remember pressing my forehead against the cool, thick glass, looking down at the people below. They looked like ants, or perhaps like grains of sand being pushed by an invisible broom. I remember feeling a strange, hollow ache in my chest—not because I was afraid of the height, but because I realized then that the world was built of patterns I couldn’t possibly control. From that high up, the chaos of the street vanished, replaced by lines and shadows that seemed to belong to a giant’s puzzle. I wanted to reach out and touch the rooftops, to see if they were as solid as they looked from the ground. I didn’t know then that we spend the rest of our lives trying to find that same distance, hoping that if we step back far enough, the mess of our own lives might finally resolve into something as orderly and quiet as a drawing. What happens to the noise when we are finally high enough to stop hearing it?

Keith Goldstein has captured this exact feeling of distance in his beautiful image titled Manhatta. He turns the frantic pulse of the city into a still, rhythmic dance of light and shadow. Does looking at it from above make you feel more powerful, or simply more small?