The Trees and the Wind

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 19^th 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.