Wondering on a Pretty Day during Easter Week, 2012[1]

Human nature is fascinatingly complex, a study in ironies and ambivalences, a quest for safety amidst enthrallment with the macabre.  In the beautiful part of the world I currently inhabit, the place where I was born but from which I was sundered for so much of my life, I glance up every morning at the remnants of an ancient glacier, topping this segment of the central range of the Andes, on the other side of which lies impatiently rumbling, what many hope is a tired old volcano.  However, its rumbles have been more pronounced lately generating tangible fears of an impending eruption, although the prospects are for a fairly mild geophysical event.  In any event, it’s far enough away so that the lovely city in which I live will only be temporarily discomfited, should the worst come to pass.

As I’ve aged I’ve come to realize how little I understand myself and how futile my efforts to come to know myself have been.  For example, I’m politically active, socially conscientious and environmentally aware, but still, something within me is fascinated by the prospect of what for too many people will be a terrible calamity, and I ask myself how that can be.  The sordid curiosity we humans share with several other species, perhaps most notably with felines (at least in fables), must say something important about who we are and perhaps why we find ourselves in such senseless dilemmas almost everywhere.

So I sit in my apartment with its amazing views of the local topology, feeling guilty as I seek signs of the possibly impending disaster, trying to escape my role as actor and entwine myself in the safe cocoon of an objectively disinterested observer, but I can’t quite make it.

A bit frustrated, I turn inward again trying to catch a glimpse of who and what I am.