Size

Driving home yesterday beneath an angry Kansas sky I was reminded again how small we are, insignificant as anthills. A storm front rolling in from the west and the great gathering clouds might be a sign of how brief our time is on this good earth.

And later, home, in the dripping aftermath of the storm, the grass glistens with dew. The first fireflies are out, which means the stars will soon follow, and if I’m still here I’ll still be wondering why we’re here, what metrics we can use to make sense of things, why we’re always brushing up against the petty pace of day to day instead of measuring out our tomorrows (and tomorrows). Instead of helping one another home. Instead of holding one another close.

Then again, we do help one another home, every day, despite how hard it is amongst the machinery and machinations of our current political madness, and isn’t that the strangest, the most wild and unbelievable thing about us, that we can hold so hard to hope in the face of our modern horrors?

It’s an old question that can’t find an end. Like how we can be happy and sad at the same time. How we can hope for the future when still struck by the weight of the past. How we can love someone but already feel the loss of their leaving. How sometimes, out standing under the stars, I get sad the night is over, before it’s even begun.

Now you tell me, what sweet nonsense or nostalgia is that?