From the Farm

This old tree was photographed last summer as we walked around Jami's family's old farm. I photographed it because it seemed particularly interesting: its lopped off branches and viney growth suggested to me the quality of endurance. This tree has lasted through the loss of many things, but it continues. Shortly after I took this photograph the land across from my childhood home was sold and is now home to a Kroger and several other stores. This large pasture land that was always there is now buried under concrete and asphalt; its gentle curves and undulations are now graded for better drainage and ease of use. Long ago the house I spent the first 12 years of my life was turned into the office for a used car lot; the woods that I played in was plowed under for a shell station; and the road that once carried 2 cars every 10 minutes now carries 50 cars a minute, more perhaps at rush hour. My great grand father's farm is now buried under a subdivision and day care center. A McDonald's and a Wal-Mart are just across the street. When I grew up I was surrounded by farmland, now only strange remnants still exist - houses that haven't gotten the word that they're no longer needed, old homes and farmland that are now weed choked and sprouting signs for hardware stores and other stores - "coming soon." How relentless is change. I told Joe today, as we sat at Twain's and drank some beer, that death comes for all of us, but we live as if in denial. Some people amass large piles of money, resources of wealth, and others struggle to survive: regardless, some and others will find the same end, and that will be the reward of their virtue and the reward for their inattention. All of us stand under this harsh reality, and in our limited time we must ask a question: Am I living, am I conscious of being me in this place with these people? Or am I failing to see, to taste, to feel each atom of existence in each moment of time in that I'm so wrapped up in my worries, my need to get ahead? I think that that's what Kierkegaard was driving at in his Postscript: that systems, ideologies, agendas give us the illusion of control over the limitations of life and the ultimate limitation of death, but that we lose sight of who we are. For Kierkegaard it was an incredible thing that someone might know "humanity as a universal in all its essentials and historical proclivities" and yet fail to be a living individual. When I worked for a web development company I commuted 3 hours each day, I worked in an office with a window but I was hunched over my desk editing - over time I became aware that I wasn't living. I felt my soul being devoured each day.
So I walked with Jami through these fields one last time as they were and I saw this old tree. I remember the feel of the heat and the give of the ground under my feet. I remember the muffled sound of traffic on the Pike. And I hear cicadas. Where is this moment now? Is it with my 12 year old feet as they follow my grandfather across the crusted furrows to see how the corn is coming up? Is it picking blueberries in our old cow pasture and hearing the yellow jackets buzz about us? Is it with the look of my family, dad's face, the preacher's face, nanny's face, as I walked in the door on the day my mother died?