What it all comes down to
By Leslie Eagle
18 February 2008
I'm having a heck of a time with The World of Tomorrow theme. I mean, anything could happen. I find myself somewhat obsessed over it. Every picture I look at I think "Yeah. That could happen."
To make matters worse, it's not like I have anything particularly outstanding to choose from. My little Power Shot just can't compete with some of these high-end cameras and to top it off I don't really know what I'm doing anyway. I just like to pretend I do and every once in a while I accidentally seem to do something right.
Nevertheless, I keep swapping out my "future vision" ... one day pollution takes over, the next day it's a new dawn of billowy purple heaven. Then "They" drop the bomb, (whoever "They" are) then it's water world or maybe a big giant trash heap. Maybe even the aliens take over.
But ultimately, after I give my Antarctica Joke a chance to circulate, I know what my answer has to be. I know that sometimes it's not the quality of an image, but the message it delivers. And even an out of focus, blurry picture just might be the only one in my entire collection that really says what I discovered needs saying; a mediocre blurry photo of a little boy. With a cape.
What little boy do you know that doesn't run around the house with a cape, even if it's a ratty old towel and a clothes pin. And how may little Wonder Girls do you know?
So I realized, I can go on all day for weeks switching around the future "this one ... no no ... this one ..." I could choose happy, sad, hopeful, glorious, desperate, arcane. It just doesn't seem to matter what I pick because I realized those kids in costume - they're ON to something here. They GET it. At four, five, six years old, they get it that what the world really needs is another Super Hero. And not only that, they somehow know that it's up to them to be it.
A can't think of a truer answer for the world of tomorrow than that.
So, little boy, I have a message for you. I hope that when you grow up you remember what you knew when you were four; that the world needs another Super Hero. And that you are it.
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