February 28, 2007
Icons
I never tire of the view out the window at the left end of my desk. It’s always the same, but never the same. The yard is steep. My view is the back half of a suburban lot held up by four hundred million year-old Devonian limestone terraces. It’s topped off by a majestic oak that rules the neighborhood hill and is named for a one-time Texas geologist (Quercus shumardii). The rest is CP’s lovely native wildflowers (asleep at the wheel right now), some hollies and cedars, a twelve-foot volunteer oak, some Otto Luken laurels, a dogwood, a jaunty potting shed, a hammock frame, grass, and a handsome woodpile.
Bill Gates and company were apparently smart to use the name Windows and the neat little flaggy bright-colored logo that calls all that attention to itself. It makes them a lot of money, and they spend it wisely and generously. Trouble is, you can’t see squat through their Windows, and that’s what windows are for. Ironically, such a “window” is pointless as a window (as we Mac writers will tell you if you just ask), for the very name — and idea — is not to shut out the view, but to ventilate it with both light and air. A window is never an end in itself, but a means to an end in itself.
“Icon,” the Greeks call windows, and icons and their iconography have a mightily refreshing place in the ventilation of one’s spirit. We (and their sycophants) miscall celebrities icons all the time when what we really seem to mean is idol. Idols, they aren’t. Icons, they aren’t, either, except when they are, and the view is usually not all that great.
There’s a splendidly brilliant day outside my window this morning. The air is brisk, so the window is closed. But the view remains. I wish you could see it with me and enjoy watching life bam along out there.
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