Why do we want to leave a trace of ourselves in this transient world? Yesterday's petroglyph is today's graffito, or perhaps, when they are conjunct, vandalism. We think modern people suffer from a sense of being separate from the world, while our primal ancestors were integral with the natural world. But they left their marks on it as well. We have no idea why they created these petroglyphs or what they might mean. But I don't know any more about the makers of the petroglyphs than I do about K.I. or the father and child who visited these markings.
I think a lot about the transience of life in these days of epidemic, not with fear but with gratitude. Each moment and each of Kayla's smiles are so precious precisely because they are so fleeting and so full of life at the same time. They are without mark, like the path of a bird in the sky. The works of my life will disappear like that bird's path, but their making was full of the vitality of creativity. And in my heart I feel deeply that these creative impulses touch something timeless.
This is the blessing of being human.
