It’s been a picture perfect-early autumn in New England. Bright, dry days. The first burst of color. Acorns fat and falling like hail.
We haven’t seen rain in a while, and that’s concerning. But the days themselves have been lovely for about two weeks.
And if I stuff my phone in my pocket and keep my head up as I walk the dog, it’s easy to feel connected to the basics. The seasons, the energy, the flow, the Spirit, the Dao.
But, once I go back inside or, worse, pick up my cell phone again, it’s even easier to see how disconnected we are from the basics, especially in the U.S.
I don’t mean this metaphorically, or mystically. I mean it literally, in concrete terms.
I mean that if you study our media, our politics, our cultural productions, our lifestyles, it is clear that we are completely disconnected from the sky, the air, the clouds, the water, the ground, the trees, the dirt, the birds, the animals, the insects…from our bodies, our love, our history…from the past, from the future…from sex and peace and Buddha and the Beatitudes…from thought itself.
We treat all of it as if it were an inconvenience or worse, something to master and squeeze for profit.
So what’s left? To what are we connected? To each other?
This is what I mean when I say that I am devoted to the humanistic enterprise, to the dignity of individual people over markets or institutions of any kind. This is what I want my work to be about…my writing, my podcast, all of it.
To what are we connected? To each other?
In a few weeks I’ll be publishing a very weird little chapbook called Terminal D, which is all about missed connections. More about that soon.
In the meantime, try to stay connected. Our isolation has consequences. We see new consequences every day.
Coming soon…
So here I am again, resident in familiars, departures follow arrivals until we stop for a while, take stock of our gains and losses, and then continue on.