Neither Nature nor the Cosmos

We were driving home close to dusk the other day from swimming exercise. We’ve lately found an efficient but much more peaceful route by residential streets to the alternate—beating our way down Mack Avenue with endless lights and double lanes. Trees against a pinkish, dimming sky, leafless or nearly so now. Endless trees. Lovely. The recurring thought came. There is nothing fallen about the world. The Fall belongs to mankind, strictly speaking, not to Nature or the Cosmos. It is a human tendency always to project our state onto whatever canvas happens to be handy. It’s not us—it’s the world that has fallen. Curiously, or perhaps not, we also project positives outward. Inspiration comes from somewhere invisibly within, but we project in onto the Muses. And then, since they are out there, we find an outward residence for them—on Mount Helikon in Pieria, in Thessaly.