Signs here. Signs there. Signs everywhere. Too many signs.
I don’t know why, but signs as a metaphor for life have intrigued me of late. After all, as vital human beings aren’t we always looking for signposts, signals, divine direction or even some prosaic affirmation of which way in life to go?
But the metaphorical is ephemeral at best. Especially when there are so many literal signs all about. Why look for meaning in symbols when there is so much concrete direction provided?
So many signs. Everywhere. It’s as if we have lost all common sense. Walk. Don’t walk. Look both ways. Go right. Stay left. Yield. Stop. Stay in lane. Remove your laptop. No cellphone usage. Bear right. Bear Left. Beware of Bears. Too many signs.
There used to be fewer signs. Was it because we were less prone to be lost? We didn’t have GPS at our noses. We had to follow our senses and our noses. Were there fewer of us and fewer places to go? And were we moving more slowly when we were going where we were going so we needed fewer signs?
There is a purity to a vista that has no signs. An unencumbered beauty ode to a natural landscape that allows us to just “be” without having someone or some sign tells us anything at all. Those vistas are harder and harder to find. Even Frank Lloyd Wright tried to convince the President of the United States not to put up telephone poles with wires on the landscape under the mountains facing his house in Phoenix. What would he think of what he saw there now?
I took a ride over the almost completed $600million Willis Avenue Bridge between Manhattan and Bronx. It is, to say the least, a vast improvement over the previous structure. Especially the “pedestrian” path. It’s wide, smooth, and has no stairs to negotiate. And it had no signs. At least until the middle and then there it was. . An egregious assault. A sign. It had no words. Just a picture of a bicycle within a “do not” red symbol. Ouch.
Like I said. Too many signs.
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