Sustainability

Sometimes I think that the past half-millennium has given us a false impression of the power that higher human reason has over baser human nature, and I think that perhaps humankind's best hope is not in conscious and rational reformation of our collective self. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that circumstance, by dumb luck, taps some previously unseen reservoir of potential for betterment in the murky, animal deeps of who we are. But I do not think about this often, because if it is true, then we cannot actively do anything to save ourselves, and I prefer to believe otherwise

In my friend’s bathroom there is a small hexagonal window and in the morning you can see the rows of oak trees shadowed and unshadowed receding and flat, and the slant of the power lines against them, and the steel grey of the sky, and all is placid and motionless through the fogged glass like an image on a screen or a mirror reflecting some still-frame memory. And I think to myself: these are the places where we are