There is a mom down the hill who dutifully takes her child outside every few hours during the day. On the rooftop of their apartment building they go, the baby fastened to her back with a cloth wrapped around her waist.
She points out to the baby, various items of interest: the doorknob, the various plants on the rooftop, the big clay jars of fermenting bean paste [doenjang] and pepper paste [gochujang], the walls, the windows, and the wires leading out and up to the neighboring houses. Following these lines, the child’s gaze can catch the forested hillside that rises behind them, and opposite this, the vast city of Daejeon below them. One-point-four-million people.
The child can’t begin to think of how the city functions, the collection of homes, businesses, churches, schools, parks, bus stops, and how all of the plants and urbanlife use these structures in various planned and unplanned ways.
The child sees it all, without the definitions that our mature minds are governed by.
From our sense he sees nothing, from his own, everything.
For now however, he is still rather fixated on the doorknob.