Starving and Consuming in the Universe

starved rock
it's easy to lose sight of art and beauty in cubicle land. i keep a picture of myself in this canyon in Starved Rock on my desktop. there is something magical in those canyons. rock formations in general, i think, have deep power. ashok and i felt it at the Grand Canyon and also in Sedona. we just wanted to sit and be quiet for hours. what's up with people that want to bring their humvees and other disruptive vehicles out into nature? i don't get it. when we--meera, mike, ashok, and me-- were in Starved Rock over memorial day weekend, we saw this family trudging through the muddy trails dragging along a plastic monstrosity with wheels. the children weren't even on it and it was evidently burdensome. jesus. trail erosion was not on their radar; they might as well have been at Great America. We managed to find some peace and quiet, though. Like in this shot that mike took. awesome.

universe

one thing that i remember doing with my dad was going outside to look at the stars. we just stared at them without talking. i like to think about space a lot. it puts my "problems" in perspective. it's funny, actually. a little tiny human has a problem! think about jupiter the giant, and saturn, a planet of gas that could float on water! the sun, 333 million miles away, giving us warmth, and sometimes burning our skin. a confluence of cosmic accidents created this perfect place called earth and it's zooming through space and turning on it's axis so fast that it appears still. and we're hitching a ride for a while. this is the Helix Nebula, expelled by a dying star. this exists now.

consumption

that's what they used to call TB back in the day. John Keats died of it at 26 (1795-1821). i found a pocket sized book of Keats' poems in my dad's closet. he (Keats) had such a sad life, but like Vincent, there must have been immense happiness in it too, the happiness of creating art. i can just see him writing his poems by candlelight. he was in love with a woman, i forgot her name, but once he came down with TB, he had to break off the engagement. he succumbed to his illness fast. he wrote many letters to her, and his poetry is tinged with melancholy. if you really read ode to a nightingale, it's not hard to cry. anyway, this part started out in my mind as something to do with 21st century consumption, then i started thinking about John.

until next time.