audrey’s Reviews > The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet > Status Update

I remember thinking that I would never be a kid again, not really, which was the first time I can recall feeling that intense longing for the you to whom you can never return.

I was worried at the end of college would spell the end of our relationship, and I wanted her to reassure me, to tell me that I need to not fear being alone, because she would always be there, and etc. But she wasn’t the sort of person to make false promises, and most promises featuring the word “always” are unkeepable. Everything ends, or at least everything humans have thus far observed ends.

Even if geese have become mundane, there remains something awe-inspiring about seeing them fly overhead in a perfect V formation. As one enthusiast put it, the Canada goose “excites the imagination and quickens the heartbeat.” More than pigeons or mice or rats, geese still feel wild to me.

But most days I would lie and tell her that school was fine. I didn’t want my hurt to travel through to her.

This is a memory that you cannot return to.

When Pablo Picasso saw the cave paintings on a visit that year, he reportedly said, “We have invented nothing.”

Nothing lies like memory.

Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that are on inspires.