Little Writer for a Little World
"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." ~ Stephen Crane
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I’ve noticed in pursuing my latest avocation that the most profound duty for a working writer is to WRITE. One isn’t allowed the luxury of awaiting ‘inspiration’, which may not show up until Thursday. Or it may never present itself at all. But there is wood to chop today, and we do our best with what we have, …
…which leads me back to the quote above. When I first heard it in the 1960’s, it was still under the rubric of ‘modern’. It’s been 125 years now, so I guess that designation has changed. Nevertheless, it rings still with a timeless simplicity: Humankind may be big around these parts, but ‘…these parts…’ are infinitesimal and are unimportant to the larger scheme.
I suspect I’ve been no less preoccupied by the churning domestic political events of recent weeks than the rest of you. I’m no less concerned than you for the future of our American democratic experiment. I do what I can (bear with me, I’m riffing into something😉). But how many billion utterances have been expended in that brief interval on that subject to confound a basic matter of simple RIGHT and WRONG? And how might I imagine that I could add anything useful to that cataract?
I can’t go any further right now in that direction, so I’m taking a different trail. I’m an amateur photographer in something of the sense of being also an amateur writer: I work at both, but I make no claims to be exceptional at either. And I don’t get paid. I bought a $400 camera at Walmart a few years ago and started shooting the same day (It cost me a little more to get an English degree at Eastern KY University 50 years ago, but not a whole lot more. We helped each other out then. Times change).
I’ve actually taken some decent photos in my time, but that isn’t the point. I’m not promoting my own stuff. The point is that studying photos has provided a great opportunity for me to see our immense natural world in a new way (that’s not easy at 76 years old). It’s given me a chance to see that humanity’s role in that world is small and finite. It will go forward largely unobstructed in its majestic purposes whether we are part of it or not. It will HAVE to go forward without me (or Trump or Biden) in the not-too-distant future. I’m sure it will do so just fine. Whether WE will be part of it (or whether or not it matters one way or the other) remains to be seen.
I copied this photo/video from Instagram. Who belongs there and who doesn’t? If you took every man-made element out of there, wouldn’t you still have a Grizzly bear just doing what it has always done and will always do? How does what we see here improve on that? Have a good day. 🙂🤔
