On the Nature of Things in My House

In these uncertain days, I keep thinking about where my belief in anything comes from: From the atom to the empyrean, from the time out o’ mind to temporality, from my cup of P.G. Tips to the ocean’s deep, from the germ & virus to dark matter and anguish. And I keep returning to this from Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age.”

That is my spirituality, deity, avatar, presence, Tao, mind, spirit, body, animism, atomism, paganism, Buddhism, life. And it’s my negative capability, my mystery, my unknowing, my confusion, my radical acceptance that comes in waves, like broadcasts that never tune-in exactly, but are always chirping in the background like the birds.

We have entered a time that Lucretius called a clinamen, which is an unexpected, unpredictable moment. We are all “swerving” through time, hoping that wisdom comes to us by the “awful grace of god.”

If this crisis is beginning to teach me anything, it’s that narratives are as vital to us as touch, others, our sense of freedom, space, and time.