REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

When satiated, many species will lounge about enjoying the warmth of breezes and sunshine. Humans are different. Tummies full, not sleepy yet, warmth is fine but not usually enough. Curiosity takes hold. No matter how barren the landscape or how dismal the TV offerings, an unstressed human will seek and usually find something to ponder.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. They are all modes of relationship. When we ponder, we ponder relationships, relationships between things and things, between things and us, between us and others, between us and things. We ponder actions, we ponder inactions. We ponder what was, we ponder what could be. We forever model our future out of what precious little we've come to understand of the past.

A daisy in a desert might in some ways seem a miracle, concrete reason to believe the world we inhabit is at base a welcoming place. Curious that the contrary is seldom considered, that a mostly lifeless universe might be quite indifferent to whether life, any life, flourishes or not.

Certainly, we have meaning and significance to each other. But that may or may not be an especially comforting thought.