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Our Season of Loss
Finding microorganisms on some other planet won’t be any great revelation, and it won’t change anything about our own lives. It will just indicate that we have developed the ability to detect what we already know is there. Humanity’s preoccupation with finding “alien” life is to me a defense mechanism: a form of avoidance that lets us focus on something other than the mess we are making of the web of life on our own planet. Let’s focus our energies on healing that, and stop pretending that finding microorganisms on Venus matters in any way whatsoever. Our meaning, and our paradise, are here in this world. — Chris Jordan
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The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
