Reading Sebastian Junger’s In My Time of Dying, How I came Face-to-Face With the Idea of an Afterlife. He goes with his daughter the next morning after the rain had wiped away their prior evening’s chalk drawings, thinking “We have no idea whether the universe even notices us much less cares.”
As an introvert solitary type this nescience on the part of the universe is fine with me. Ama Nesciri (love to be unknown) is as good a motto as any. One of my favorite practices for over fifteen years was to introduce myself yearly to a professor from the University of Pittsburgh when at a conference reception telling her my name. She seemed always annoyed saying “I know who you are” (then laughed) as we shook hands. I suspect it was a little game, but I never presumed anyone remembered me, did know my name or who I was.
I suspect, if such an anthropomorphism be allowed, the universe cares only for itself. Such an idea, of course, needs be modified by the proposition that “itself” includes everything in a wholistic internality of non-linearity and infinitude. We’re the ones who partialize and temporize while jockeying for preferred treatment and special acknowledgment.
We are in se and per se, in itself and by itself, as we find ourselves in this space and time we call life and the universe. It seems to take some thought and reflection to realize we are also pro alia (for another) and inter alia (among other things). Some have a difficult time grasping inter-relationality, much less a calling to be responsive and responsible for ‘others’ in the world. God help us if we are governed by such detached and non-responsive people.
Rain washes away our artwork and brief poems.
Whole blocks of buildings collapse in an earthquake.
Civilizations disappear over long periods of time.
Inertia and entropy dance wide circles within and without our consciousness. An unchanging falling apart dizziness surrounds us as we step into and out of each particular situation befalling us.
Think nothing of it.
It is a large wave holding us under.
It is a shrugging terraform both inviting humanity and disinviting it with the nonchalance and insouciance of a self-involved entity.
For many among us, it seems to matter that we are acknowledged and cared for. That’s probably par.
For others of us, family is a sometimes thing. We are wary, worried, and full of wonder at what presents itself before us.
That we are enfolded, embraced, and cared-for is a slow awakening from a sluggish sleepiness that inches cautiously toward something dearer to us than we know.
Rain, night, and an emptiness that (always) begins again and new, an invitation to new pastel chalk to mark creatively the ground.
