Words&Dirt

“‘I fell in love with you that summer. I remember lying on the beach, looking up at the stars, and listening to you describe the way the world should be, the way the world would be. It was magical, prescient even. I’ve never stopped admiring your ability to not take the world as it is, to see the universe as an impermanent, malleable thing. You wrapped me up in the beauty and inevitability of it all.’

Vera straightened up with visible effort. ‘But that vision is also a prison. You’re so absorbed with the future that you don’t see or appreciate the present. You don’t see or appreciate the side effects of your mission. You don’t see or appreciate me. The universe is definitely impermanent and malleable. But it’s so much bigger and more complicated than we can imagine. We can contribute to it, but we can’t engineer it.'”

––Cumulus, by Eliot Peper, loc. 639