The Past

Outside my office building there is a tree root that that has enveloped an irrigation pipe.  The pipe is lifted and is slowly buckling as the root grows over and under its captive.   The pressure on the plastic pipe must be enormous and in a matter of time the pipe will inevitably break.  Water will spill and maintenance will fix the leak.  Everything will seem the same but in truth it won't be.  Nature will again have proven that in man's never ending march toward progress it will always ultimately define the outcome.

It seems as I grow older I find myself seeking to find my place in the world.  It is a world filled with change, constantly adjusting, never quite the same.  I  feel like the pipe, twisting and turning and some day I will break.  When you are young there is no limit to time yet some day you will wake up and realize that time is changing all that is around us including ourselves.

When you live in a modern country like America we gain little sense of the past.  We have some old things but unless you are a naturalist or an American Indian with a vision of the natural world it is a concept that is difficult to understand.  Things change but it is simply the new being replaced by the newer.  Everything is really quite temporary, most buildings have a limited lifespan.  I challenge most to look at their home and imagine it standing a hundred years from now.

Not having a concept of the past or future has always been frustrating to me.  Everything about being an American teaches us to live in the moment.  Consume in the moment, don't worry too much about tomorrow.  It was only when I went to Europe to study as a university student did a light bulb begin to illuminate.  The streets that I walked on and the buildings that I lived in far surpassed my own time in this world.  They have seen marauding knights, horses, carriages.  Great composers and countless poor lost to the worlds memory like grains of shifting sand. 

There is something uniquely special about sleeping in a room that has existed for hundreds of years.  It is simply hosting you as a guest for a moment.  In my mind a line of time becomes apparent and I am only a small dot lost somewhere at the far end.  On the one hand, someone might find this simple position uniquely insignificant and depressing yet from my eyes I find it enlightening and satisfying.  For once in my life I see myself and my place in all that is humanity.  It is a tiny place, almost unnoticeable yet it is my place, my dot.  I stare at the plaster walls, painted with layers of paint that peel away like the skin of an onion and think of all the stories they have harbored.  So many smiles, so many tears.  Tragedy and love, it is all there and so am I.

Eventually I will be gone but with luck, that room or street will remain.  Someday another will think the same thoughts, wondering about the lives of others.  When the pipe breaks and is replaced, the root will still be there.  As the years turn it will push and pull on the new life carefully guiding it until it eventually breaks and is reformed again.