Constantly Losing Everything

There’s been so little snow this winter. At last it’s coming down now, but in previous years we would’ve had the plows out every day for the last month or two. Here is a photo of me on the beach just two days ago. I was missing the snow and thinking about loss, about what it is and how it registers in us. Two observations: (1) I think it never comes on quickly; it always sneaks up; and (2) everything is loss.When it comes on quickly--lightning hitting a huge old pine in front of the cottage--it's not yet loss. It's shock. If your mother suddenly dies, for example,  there’s shock. The loss hasn’t begun yet. The loss itself is the tangible sense of absence that continues until it’s assimilated so deeply we can hardly tell absence from presence. Does that make sense? Have I said that right?And as for my second observation:  we have only this moment. As soon as we can speak of it or describe it, it’s lost. It’s recollection. We’re missing it or we wouldn’t be struggling for the words. And the words themselves—we talk about them as metaphor, but what is metaphor but loss? Meaning:  I can’t say how it is. Here is something I'll make stand for how it is, and this is the best I can do.  Sorry.Here’s the snow now,  coming in soft and persistent flakes,  and the ground is now covered as it should be this time of year. “As it should be” registers a loss, the loss of perfection. Finally, the weather's attempting to be what it “should be.”That photo of myself I took on the beach, with the water and sand? Let me tell you what’s wrong with that photo: it’s mid-January in northern Michigan. The bay should be solid ice; there should be ice fishermen out there drinking beer in their shanties and pretending to fish; ice should be shelving in a decorative fringe at the shoreline; the sand should be buried until spring and come back into view like a crocus, as if it had just been invented.And here is another picture. In this one, thousands of zebra mussel shells are washed up and broken on the beach. They should not be here. They were brought in from across the Atlantic and into the Great Lakes in insufficiently cleaned ballast tanks. See how clear the water is? It’s always clear—you wouldn’t believe how clear—but now it’s deadly clear. The little zebra mussels have eaten the microorganisms near the bottom of the food chain that supports the fish and crawdads.I was thinking of how the Jews kept pretending that Hitler would stop at small acts of violence against them—closing their stores, making them wear stars. I know this analogy is too huge, but it seems to be human nature to want to be happy, to push away everything that makes us feel unhappy. Like Global Warming. Happily, there are wonderful organizations—like our own local Watershed Center—that keep reminding us and reminding us what practical things we can do, to keep us from drowning in our sorrow.Still, we get used to the losses. Gradually the loss of the dodo, the Caspian tiger, the guagga, the passenger pigeon get absorbed into our being—the loss begins to feel like simply what is.Every generation thinks The End is Near (and it may be) and also every generation thinks it has some new insight into the meaning of existence. I wonder if the insight of our time might be a coming-to-grips with constant change. Endless coming-into-being, endless loss.The possibility of a Unified Theory of Everything seems no longer a possibility. And we see that Einstein may have been wrong. Each universe may operate under entirely separate “rules.” End-time metaphors no longer serve us; we have no “answers,” and not even any useful questions, really. Just “this is how it is.” Things are in glorious and constant motion. We are a part of that.Which is both terrible and glorious.This is not a new insight, by any means. But it seems to be rising in the collective consciousness. Or is this just me, thinking this? Is our generation coming to any "new" awareness?  How do we fundamentally see things differently? If it's not this, what is it? Just curious what you think.Of course I want the Great Lakes to be beautiful and as they should be. I want snow to fall when it should fall. Of course I do. Even the longing, and even our vigilant work toward these ends, is part of the huge back-and-forth of things, yes?