The People

I don't know what exactly it is, but I'm finding myself--once again, perhaps--surprised by reality. Maybe it's that I've become a little too bookish for my own good, or simply just disillusioned, but I keep looking up at the world and thinking, "Holy shit. This is actually happening." Climate change is occurring. People are living. I am typing this. The stories of history are real. Just think about that. Plato isn't just some figure in books, he was a real human being who actually walked the earth and looked up at the same sky and same clouds we do today. History is not some idea; it is what has actually happened. Jesus Christ! (who really existed).

I dunno. Maybe it's just the burgeoning understanding that I'm a part of a larger continuum--that I'm a part of some greater shared experience--that is just so unbelievable to me. And not at all in a bad way; rather, I'm just trying to situate myself in this way of looking at things, although it might make me feel uneasy and overwhelmed at times.

The poet Robert Creeley once wrote:

"Will it be that someday we come to some relation with those who make up our condition, humans, that will not argue their histories as all that they depend on for relation--or else, more accurately, that what they do is more relevant to all their lives, one by one or all in all, than what they didn't. I feel such trust in life, once I stop all that previous qualification--just that I know I'm alive, and witness it with such pleasure in others, we are here--I'm happy, in the most simplistic of senses. I've thought a lot, like they say, but more than that I've not found." (A Day Book)