January 27: Almost Comfortable, Human Versus Nature, Wild Flowers

Santiago settles in for a long night . . . 

The fish never changed his course nor his direction all that night as far as the man could tell from watching the stars. It was cold after the sun went down and the old man's sweat dried cold on his back and his arms and his old legs. During the day he had taken the sack that covered the bait box and spread it in the sun to dry. After the sun went down he tied it around his neck so that it hung down over his back and he cautiously worked it down under the line that was across his shoulders now. The sack cushioned the line and he had found a way of leaning forward against the bow so that he was almost comfortable. The position actually was only somewhat less intolerable; but he thought of it as almost comfortable.

I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me, he thought. Not as long as he keeps this up.

It's a pretty classic confrontation:  human versus nature.  You see it all the time in movies and books.  The Old Man and the Sea.  Moby Dick.  Jaws.  The Biblical narrative of Noah and the Great Flood.  Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  Right now, the entire planet is in the grips of a deadly virus that most scientists think originated in bats or pangolins.  (Sorry, conspiracy theorists.  It wasn't intentionally released from a top-secret Chinese lab.)

Here's the thing:  nature happens.  Human beings, since we first appeared on this planet, have been exploiting its resources.  Sometimes this exploitation has been in harmony with the environment (see any Indigenous culture in the United States), but, most of the time, we have caused/are causing great harm to the world in order to get what we want.  And, by hurting the world, we hurt ourselves.

When this pandemic first began, human beings simply ceased their normal, everyday carbon-footprinting lifestyles.  We weren't flying or driving anywhere.  Instead, we just stayed home.  Read.  Watched TV.  Played games with our immediate families.  Christmas was simpler, calmer.  New Year's Eve was marked quietly, with the hope that the coming 365 days were somehow going to be better.  For the first time in 30 years, the peaks of the Himalayas were visible from India because of the reduced air pollution.  In the human versus nature battle, nature seemed to be winning for a while.

It didn't last.  Because human beings are inherently stupid, selfish creatures.  As soon as the politicians kicked open the doors, we started storming and pillaging again, even though it wasn't (and still isn't) safe to do so.  (I'm talking to you, school superintendents!)  

At the moment, I'm sitting on my couch.  Everyone else has gone to bed.  As has been happening these last seven days, when I become unbusy, the compass needle of my mind zeroes in on thoughts of my sister, Rose.  Her simplicity and smile.  She wasn't perfect.  None of us are.  But she was pretty damn close.

Since I've been talking about nature, I will say that Rose's nature was like those pictures I've seen of the Himalayas from India.  She was always there, in good times and bad.  Sometimes she was fogged by the things that pollute our days--anger, pettiness, impatience.  Through all of that, she just sat at the dining room table, playing cards with my mom.  Latch hooking rugs.  Writing letters to family and friends.  Drinking Diet Coke.  Her needs for happiness were pretty basic.  

This is what I know about the struggle of human versus nature:  it shouldn't be a struggle.  Mountains don't ask to be stared at.  Trees don't ask to be photographed.  Lakes are pretty happy just sending waves to the shore.

Rose didn't ask to have Down Syndrome.  It was just a part of her.  Like snow on the peaks of Mount Everest.  Or the aurora flashing green in winter skies.  Rosemarie.  Rosie Begonia.  Rose.  Rosebud.  She was a flower blooming in this world.  Luke writes in his gospel, "Consider how the wild flowers grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these."

Saint Marty thinks the world is a little less splendored these days.  But that's the nature of life.