The Adventures of Swiss Ms.

Can't help thinking about our still trembling neighbor to the south and feel incredibly sad about all the loss to which it awoke this morning. Even an airy-fairy blog about an airy-fairy life must once in a while come down from the mountains and deal with reality, at least at those times when its author cannot bear wordplay or anecdotes or pretty photographs. One's arm gets tired from pointing at the sun amid the clouds; perhaps you yourself are tired of squinting into it.

"Cruelty is a mystery," wrote Annie Dillard, "and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous."

Whether we are listening or not, leaves rustle, birds chirp, water laps. The sun does not disappear when we close our eyes. A field of wildflowers still smells glorious without our breaths. We may shudder, close our eyes, become willfully insensible – a rightful pause – but that does not stop life from lumbering along gratuitously without us.