I Grudgingly Admit a City Can Be Beautiful

Tulsa Skyline

Just After Sunset

If I were a better photographer, you would be admiring the beautiful super moon rising amid the buildings of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma right now. The placement of the moon was unfortunate because no matter what I did, I also photographed the flash - or my own reflection - in the hotel window. At the time the review of the photographs could only be done from the 2" screen on the back of the camera, I did not realize that the television behind me was also reflecting in the photos. I have 24 photographs of a beautifully lit downtown cityscape with a glowing television screen strategically placed in the intersection of streets. It looks like a hologram magically hanging in midair for the good citizens and visitors of Tulsa. (Good thing my paycheck isn't dependent on my photography skills.)

Downtown Tulsa sits next to the Arkansas River, and the view from the downtown buildings toward the river is beautiful. The only trouble is the enormous refinery that sits on the opposite bank. In its own way, that is beautiful, too, with it's strange industrial geometries.

The mystery of our human evolution amazes me. A mere 200,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in the 4.5 billion years of the earth's existence, we were huddled by the fire, hoping to avoid being eaten by a cave bear. We were wearing skins and stone tools were our highest technology. Now we build big clean cities, awash in light and noise and energy 24 hours a day. Anyone can fly through the air if they have the price of the ticket. There are so many of us that few humans have to worry they will be eaten by a bear. In fact, there is a higher probability of being eaten by a psycho human cannibal than by a bear. Our human consciousness expresses itself so differently than the nature consciousness that ruled the planet for all those long epochs of time before the noise of man was ever heard.

Maybe there are too many of us on the planet now. Or, maybe this is our destiny - to reach a point of saturation so our collective consciousness will ignite. Perhaps together we will make the jump to light, becoming wise in the flash of blinding moment. And maybe we will then be at least smart enough not to destroy the Monarch butterfly, or poison the oceans, or slaughter the great sentient beings living there. If we are not smart enough, perhaps the bears will win the long evolutionary battle after all.