The intertidal zone

The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be. Louis de Berniere, novelist.

Saying goodbye to the old year seems an apt time to ponder this quote (from Word a Day). I’ve foregone opportunities this week, this day, to be kinder than necessary (to others, to the earth, to myself); I’d like to take up more of them in the coming year and if you do, too, well, how civilised we might become.

My family said goodbye yesterday to perhaps its most civilised member, Uncle Frank Davie, with tears, and coral-coloured roses laid on coffin and violin. We remembered his gentleness, wit, compassion, mischief, vegetarianism, intelligence, laughter, and those piercing blue eyes which told you he knew something of the law of the stars. Here is a tribute from one who loved him well.

Frank was kinder than he needed to be. It’s a fine thing to have his footsteps up ahead.

… could prove beautiful. Okay, perhaps I haven’t picked the most elegant image but prepare to be awed by the others at this BBC site — with thanks to Grace at Rata Weekly for pointing me in that direction.

Via vast new telescopes and exploratory eyes-in-the sky, we’re seeing planets, stars and galaxies in scope and detail unimaginable mere decades ago. If the inner world is ‘intensified sky’ as Rilke has it, what does this expansive new vision say about our capacity as humans? It might say that willing or not, ready or not, we are opening, being opened, to new possibilities — which are ours to embrace or to refuse.