It has been a while since my last update. I have to say that I am glad to come back to Texas with a brand new vision. I used to describe Texas as a life-sized oven with absolutely no sense of provocation or elegance. Well the oven was visited by a couple of cold fronts recently and people did not sweat this winter like they used to.



I have discovered, out of surprise that one of the major differences between New York City and Texas is the sky. In the Big Apple, you hardly get a complete picture of an entire sky because skyscrapers always scrape into the sky zone. They often appear gray. But oh the sky in Houston is clear, blue (even with its pollution) and wide. It is certainly nothing but a vast realm of openness. I told my friend that I haven't looked at a sky- where your sight isn't blocked by a building every 5 seconds- in a long time.



Without an accurate comparison with the urban city, I'll have to say that we often take too much advantage of the Texas majesty. It just so happens that Texas was not given with the mercy of valleys and mountains, horses and SUVs can run on the roads as free as they were intended to be. That is why that sheer layer of cloud is able to spray across the whole sky and creating the scene where the natural roof is captured in its frozen moments of beauty.

I used to whine in my high school art class because I thought Houston is really the last place where I could find inspirational scene from daily observation. It is composed of purely nameless buildings and monochromatic housing units. If you stared down from an elevating plane at a distance, you shall see the gradual disappearance of the neighborhoods among the crisscrossing highways. Yet who would have thought that Texas possesses the most gallant sky of all, just as soon as you raise your chin and look up. Before I learned the power of looking up, the electric poles either served as a disturbance in the openness or an extra aid the city's lack of aesthetics. However, today, I see them as another gorgeous production of Texas beauty. The poles almost become the supporting dimensions to a place where layering is not much needed.


On one hand, we the citizens have no choices over the looks of mother nature or the city's industrial blueprint; on the other hand, we do have the choices of looking up or looking down and search within our own vision a beauty that matches our heart.