A Stone Quiet Firmament

Everything is stone quiet; the snow-covered fields, traffic on the highway distant below, jet planes above in the firmament. Even the farm dogs deep in the valley volleying barks with the coyotes, all of that tussle muted on the damp, heavy air. Everything is stone quiet. Stone quiet, and the moon is one day past the blood moon and mostly shuddered by a sky overcast with cloud racing along on the prevailing wind. I’m standing high in a dimly lit mountain valley on a road that is mostly vacant. I am not unhappy, but feel myself disintegrating into the landscape, by molecule falling away and tumbling along the fields of snow. I am not unhappy. I accept all of this.

I’m coming to terms with nihilism. I understand that systemically, we have no consequence. I have always known this. By sixteen I questioned everything and had a pretty firm belief that life had no meaning. I was reading Nietzsche by grade ten and remember my English teacher making fun of me. I obsessed over these things, wondered what made any of our aspirations significant, and I didn’t understand why others chased the goals that they did. All of our timid aspiring, our subtle gestures, all of our small things while entertaining, fall away.

But all the while I have love. And all the while I have hope, and I have lazy days watching pine needles fall, or bending willow branches for my passage through a thicket. And I know that regardless of our value, be it high or low, there is something significant in our time here, in our want to continue.