{"id":260,"date":"2022-08-10T11:36:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T18:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2022-08-19T14:30:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T21:30:34","slug":"viewing-the-world-anew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"Viewing the world anew"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This summer, I took two of my sons to a sporting event in the Netherlands&#8211;they won medals, we hung out with their team-mates and other parents then, when it was all over, we stayed on for a few days. I&#8217;m from Europe, and there&#8217;s something about going back that is like a balm: seeing tiny cars instead of streets full of SUVs, noticing the charging stations for electric vehicles that are only slowly making their way into the US. But it&#8217;s more than noticing different approaches to the threat of climate change that means so much to me: simply being in another country where the food is different (A hamburger with egg? Yes, and it was delicious), where the language is like a puzzle for us English-speakers to work out (cheese is kaas, egg is ei, thank you is dank u well) means that you simply have to pay more attention to the world around you. The work of fiction is the same essential task: to allow us to see a familiar world that our eyes glide over in ways that make it slightly unknown, slightly strange, to turn it back into a world that deserves our attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-261\" width=\"537\" height=\"716\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-1024x1365.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-810x1080.jpg 810w, https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/20220801_170721-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 537px) 100vw, 537px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This summer, I took two of my sons to a sporting event in the Netherlands&#8211;they won medals, we hung out with their team-mates and other parents then, when it was all over, we stayed on for a few days. I&#8217;m from Europe, and there&#8217;s something about going back that is like a balm: seeing tiny&hellip; <br \/> <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/?p=260\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerribrightwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}