It’s not as if we don’t know.It’s as if we  felt powerless to do anything other than shake our heads, or shake our fists, or retreat into our private quirks, just “hoping for the best” i.e. that we, individually, will be spared the worst. Because of the worst that is to come, of this, we are quite certain, while still “waiting for the miracle to come”, as Leonard Cohen sang. In the meantime, we behave exactly like teenagers playing chicken, daddy’s car racing down the road, head-on toward another daddy’s car our best friend is driving straight into ours. But death is for somebody else, isn’t it? There’s the thrill, and our excellent reflexes right there, ready for the last-minute swerve.

Plus, the dope. Prescribed for many who wander through their days, sleepwalking, feeling little pain and even less enjoyment, sensing nothing, in fact, but a diffuse background of unease like a fog muting every edge. And the street goods for many others who crave one thing only – to be rid of the burden of self, and the vise of failure squeezing them tighter every time they catch a glimpse of the sorry state they’re in.

Some go on writing – for better, for worse, for no reason at all, except a need to witness and record because, as Arendt said, humans are speaking animals.

Such as the poem I just glued into my notebook after snipping it out of a New York Review of Books dated July 15 2010:

Crystal Declension

Well, two things are certain –

the sun will rise and the sun will set.

Most everything else is up for grabs.

It’s back on its way down now

As a mother moose and her twin calves

Step lightly, lightly

across the creek through the understory

And half-lit grasses,

Then disappear in a clutch of willow bushes.

If one, anyone,

Could walk through his own life as delicately, as sure,

As she did, all wreckage, all deadfall,

Would stay sun-lit, and ring like crystal among the trees.

– Charles Wright

Witnessing. Recording. Of that much, I know.