life looks better in valencia.
The more technology plows into the future, the more I feel like a 91-year-old grandmother muttering about how things were better in the good old days while I ineffectually claw at the past with my arthritic talons. Despite me sitting here trying desperately to take things back to basics, people are continually making one more invention after the next to make my life “better.” Damn it, people! When is real life going to be good enough?
You know what Instagram does? Give me anxiety.
Doubtful ever again, especially with the advent of these new glasses by a company called Tens. Designed to “enhance” the dull, ordinary experience of seeing (ho hum), these shades are made with a “real life photo filter” that is apparently like “Instagram or your eyes.” You know what Instagram does? Give me anxiety. You know what I think about Instagram for my eyes? When Katharine Lee Bates penned “America the Beautiful” and wrote of “purple mountain’s majesty”—an accurate description of that dusky, fading shade a gorgeous wall of rock takes on if ever there were one—she was not wearing glasses that amp up reality to something, I don’t know, cooler. What she saw before her was enough, because, life as it stands, my friends, is enough.
I’m all about advancements that help civilization—cures for cancer, high-tech prosthetics, something (anything) that might prevent us from running this planet off an ecological cliff—but the constant barrage of meaningless little things meant to effectively Photoshop your life is bumming me out. The rose-colored glasses of my delusional brain are quite enough, thank you very much.
