On the roads there are a lot of people white-knuckling their way to consumer nirvana, with all the windows on the cars rolled up even on a beautiful day. It has an outer-space aspect to it. Also I've taken on a job in a gated, golf community and it has an inter-planetary feel. There may be a solar system, galaxy or parallel universe in which these things make sense.
They don't on Earth. You wonder, if you could measure happiness by the levels of certain hormones, if we're better off than aborigines. A few times in my life I've been somewhere so dark the night-sky looked like black construction paper with crazy-salt scattered on it. It doesn't get any better on a beautiful, clear night. It's an experience of awe.
And it carries with it a sense of your own smallness, which is liberating because your problems and worries become small. I've always felt at-home in the presence of grandeur. That's what I'm looking for, that perspective, which for me is true and harder to come by lately. Mankind has won an imaginary battle with nature too well for its own good.
I know what it's like to want to shoot deer because they're eating my lunch but we're way past that, competing with other species for resources. I don't know what to do but I'll start by re-reading some Willa Cather. She always helped me with perspective. There's something about her outlook, maybe having to do with her origins on the amazing American plains.
A place where the beauty of the sky can blanket you, day or night. I'll pull THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE off the shelves, which I remember the most vividly of her books. And I may read some history. I recall being told that all of recorded human history was a flash and I understand it now, thinking of perspective. It's been a party which will end.
We hope voluntarily and in a controlled way and without a terrible aftermath, but we'll see.
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