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| Thomas Cole, 1839 |
Yesterday, I sat for a
long time on the grass under a canopy of massive trees in the West Adams District near downtown Los Angeles. I
was reminded of the Hudson River School of painters from the 19th
century, the atmosphere so permeated with romanticism. The air was fresh and breezy, becoming
downright windy with a storm on the way for Thanksgiving.
I thought about
everything we cling to in life, the things we cannot imagine living without,
and then they are gone and there is no choice but to live on. The absence is permanent, the wound scars
over, and we move forward. It might even
be a necessity in life to jettison everything periodically and start fresh.
Under those big trees,
I kept asking myself, what do I truly need?
What can I not live without? What
do we all need to survive?
We keep going until we
are gone, like the shadowy ghosts camped out in makeshift tents and cardboard
houses by the side of the freeway that I see while sitting in traffic on the
commute home in the evening. I look at
them and think apocalypse; they see themselves, I imagine, as just surviving
another day and living to tell the tale.
If I were more courageous, I would like to talk to them, hear their
stories. I am sure Thanksgiving has a
very different meaning to them.
There are lessons to
be learned: the rain always comes; the
trees will still stand long after we are gone; and there are great movements
and currents coursing through life, swirling all around like the wind, yet
often invisible.
We are the days we
live in the places we inhabit. And after
those days, we remain as imprints on the continuing world, the ghosts of all we
once were, and remain.
