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I'm thinking about the unlikelihood of life,
yours, mine, anyones,
looking at the latest gossamer images
of spidery spinning galaxies
from the James Webb Space Telescope
light traveling 13 billion years
to my eyes
and mind;
the further we see into the past
the less we understand
about how we emerged
out of this cocoon of inanimate
cosmos.
Both my father and mother are dead now.
It's as if they never existed.
I have some photos
of them
light exposed on film
chemically set to glossy paper
making patterns,
and of course as further proof
of their existence
there's me
and neural sparks
of memory.
I am original.
Me and my consciousness
like an ocean boat
cutting a wake
from one island in time
to the distant next
awake
soon to disappear.
2 comments:
Far be it for me to proselytize ... but for me, feelings like this ultimately lead me to God and/or thoughts about God. Not that it's easy to believe in God -- of course it isn't! And religion (especially Judaism!) often -- I mean very often -- misses the forest for the trees ... but if you buy into it, and you allow it to influence the way that you see the world, it can, sometimes, bring some cold comfort.
I guess I find it curious that we should have to ‘buy into’ a notion as important as a Creator. When I was growing up I used to tell my mother (because she, and not my father, seemed to care about my musings), that I felt like I was adopted by this family, or even dropped from the sky. I suppose because to me our family felt cold and emotionally removed. It was hard for me to believe that I belonged. It took a long time for me to be convinced that I was in fact born to my parents. And as I’ve gotten older, and see how physically similar I am to them in their middle years, that sense of belonging has gotten stronger. But that sense of alienation that I felt as a child remains. And it’s probably why after attending synagogue regularly for more than 15 years I could never muster a heartfelt belief in a Creator.
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