The view from my porch sucks. I’m sitting in a lawn chair, with a beer and a couplea candles burning down on the ledge. My view is of a parking lot awning and a street light. Oh look, there is a tree. Brilliant.

Where I grew up there was no special ‘view’ (“Oh look, honey! I can see a tree…don’t mind the powerlines and rooftops. We have a view!”).

It was just trees, hills, and sky. I didn’t have to have the world mediated through a porch viewfinder. It just was there. All of it – as Reverend Lovejoy calls it, “the cheap showiness of nature.”

Here, my view is limited by fake adobe and a garage structure and the constant rumble of the freeway. Airplanes fly overhead and cars cruise through the parking area.

I think Steven Jesse Bernstein said it best.