Elsewhere

An excerpt from my latest piece for Fathom Mag:

“In this Google-able age, where the very names of our most popular technological resources are rooted in mythology—Siri, Alexa, Amazon—we might do well to remember that our world, mighty and mysterious, is vastly unfindable. That our declinate minds will fail us. That curiosity needs little confirmation.

That the most powerful phrase we can offer, sometimes, is I don’t know.

We are not here to get smart. We are not here to build knowledge or kingdoms, to search the unsearchable. There is no answer key, no syllabus, no shortcut down Sepulveda Boulevard.

Instead, there is this: deep, satisfactory awe.

Babies born under impossible circumstances. Whale patterns dictated by the moon. Great loves fought for, lost, regained by an inch. The speed of a blink, the bite of a lemon. Thunder. Freckles. Breath. Ten thousand trillion ants weaving beneath fourteen billion legs all scurrying around under the same stretch of sky.

It is enough to make you gasp, the final realization that perhaps we grow wise not through knowledge but through wonder.”

Feel free to read the rest right this way.

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