2021/8/10 #poetry When you get to the beach, turn around and look from the water into the city. With your back at the edge, facing the rumbling commotion of rushed lives, all bunched together, take a second to remember your snaking path there. What chains of consequences were triggered as you came to where you are? How have they unfurled and mixed into the churn that lays before you now? How little of this vast cauldron of motion and decision you are able to grasp, even at the edge, with the widest perspective. Were it not for the oppressively condensed focus on minutia that each, if not every, body going about its business in the city commanded, there would not be much of the activity that transpires there. From out at the edge, looking in, a mile away, you can't even see the consternation a fellow finding a scratch in the paint on their car exhibits. What weight has this scratch for you? What meaning has it for history? But that scratch, that huff of frustration, turns into a trip to the auto body shop, an hours work for a detailer, an exchange of money for services. This time taken, this effort spent, this money moved all has effects on the whole of it, the bustle and buzz, churning and heaving all for the sake of these little small things. You know that. You know the inconsequentiality of most of your actions when taken in larger scope as well as the consequence of them at a mere arms length. Would you know to take the narrow perspective when things go smoothly and the broader outlook when stuff got rough, then perhaps you could take on anything.