Ground fog again this morning.
An occasional wind around the corners of the house suggests winter. I rise in the morning feeling a need to contribute, feeling that my time in this place should mean something, that it matter. Is this a natural human drive? Do all of us, each in our own way, want to leave a mark on the place, a marker that says "I was here and I contributed"? Could we continue to live if we didn't believe it makes a difference?
There are leaves in driveways and on the lawns with serious intent to vandalize. This marks the end of summer. You cannot deny the change.
The morning speaks for itself. Sun coming through the fog still bright enough to blind me, the fresh smell of a new day, moisture in the grass, and this - new - the smell of wood smoke. Someone thought it was chill enough a night to fire up the wood burner.
Out in the country the ground fog sets itself about twelve feet off the ground. Someone is working a field where sweet corn had been taken - rubble disappears into the soil, becomes the soil, the past becomes the future. Certainly the farmsteads silhouetted in the morning mist are a lovely image - keep it. Hold it and love it. This is our Wisconsin on a September morning in 1998. Do not let it get away. This is not a "Canadian morning." It is ours entirely.
The flowers at Five Corners are starting to hunker down. They put their heads together and whisper "The end, the end."
Once again, I get lost in the moment - I am into Ripon without realizing that I have been moving, driving, enjoying. A worm hole in the mind, like a wormhole in space, taking you from here to there in a blind instant. So far, so fast, so fine.
"Could we continue to live if we didn't believe it makes a difference?"
Experience suggests, absolutely, yes. Much of life seems lived mindlessly. Perhaps the closer one is to bare survival, too, the more the sheer and awesome accomplishment of merely existing is 'difference' enough for some.
But for others, the despair is crippling.
Posted by: Tonio | September 19, 2004 at 04:34 PM
Hi, Tonio--I suppose it was meant as a rhetorical questions; yet when one answers it, it is clear that we are willing to endure an awful lot, just hanging on to the threads of hope. As Ben Zen says, "Nothing lasts forever except despair."
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 21, 2004 at 06:50 AM