This is my week of jury duty, which is I guess a pretty good literal representation of how the rest of everything goes, all the archipelagos of waiting, dim islands of something all surrounded by the milky swamps of not much at all. All of my pathways seem lost in the mud, the corpse candles as always leading in circles. I don't know why we always follow them, drawn without reason to their bright flash even though we know better, turning to look back once we leave the swamp and finding ourselves drawn back in. Maybe it's only that the lure of something different is stronger that the thought of something new.
At the end of an essay about forests John Muir talks about the hidden lairs of all the animals, nearby and yet as difficult to find as if they were in the sky. But I think that's true of the habitat of most of us, unknowable as the sky, hidden in unexpected corners and cracks. Sometimes that's a comfort, our hands like sieves since what's important is somewhere safe, our eyes filled with only new things. Mostly, though, I think it would do us best to unearth each molecule of everything and have a bonfire with it, all together. To start emptyhanded from the same place.
At the end of an essay about forests John Muir talks about the hidden lairs of all the animals, nearby and yet as difficult to find as if they were in the sky. But I think that's true of the habitat of most of us, unknowable as the sky, hidden in unexpected corners and cracks. Sometimes that's a comfort, our hands like sieves since what's important is somewhere safe, our eyes filled with only new things. Mostly, though, I think it would do us best to unearth each molecule of everything and have a bonfire with it, all together. To start emptyhanded from the same place.