Sunday, September 27, 2020

The world isn't really dying

Photos by Tony Galati


     "Got to the cabin yesterday," faithful reader Tony Galati writes. "The leaves started without me this year."
     Nature will do that. One of her sterner yet more valuable lessons is that the world chugs on whether we are there or not, whether we like it or not. Always has; always will.
     The vast majority of it anyway. We all have our little corners that we decorate or ruin, then mistake for the whole thing, a bit of unconscious synecdoche that no doubt is essential. We'd be overwhelmed if we pulled back too far too often and understand just what a dust mote we are traveling for a split in second in the vast twirling icy eternity of everything.
     Still, when things go south, as they do, and our minute slice of space and time curdles, as it has, that exercise can be curative. To divert our gaze away from our precious selves toward the beauty of the parts we aren't part of, the things we haven't screwed up yet. Pull back, look around, notice the forest from the trees, the leaves and not our footprints through them.
     Between the election and the pandemic and the economic calamity and the racial reckoning, I've heard the phrase "the world is coming to an end" more than once, and might have even used it once or twice myself. But the world is more certainly not coming to an end. Our little part of it, perhaps, though not yet and not without a fight. In the meantime, it's autumn.
Lake Superior

2 comments:

  1. What a gorgeous piece- thank you. The photos are stunning too, make me really miss cold wet Midwest days. It's good to be on this journey of life with you Neil.

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  2. Ironic that leaves are most beautiful just before falling and dying.

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