A Beginning and An End: A Visual Narrative (Revised and Republished from 4/14/2019)

Staying on theme this week in anticipation of completing a rather long analysis of the recent Democratic Presidential town halls on climate change, I reprint a piece from this past April. It feels relevant under our ongoing discussions on the fate of humanity and our planet itself. The study of the town halls will likely appear on Sunday. Watching those seven hours of cynical politics combined with the deadly earnestness of shifting tones is absolutely exhausting. In the meantime, please consider this. Tomorrow I expect to revise and reprint a piece on American football as a religion.

Once

then

until

But

and

and even

Eventually

with

feeding this

Finally, on earth

and then

until, eventually

and they reigned

Time passed

and life grew harder

until the end finally came

But life has a way of moving on.

New life arose

then

and

and

Finally, many years later

and we know at least part of the story

We disovered new things and came to thrive

I suppose we learned

Things changed rapidly after this

It got even weirder:

Finally,

then

years later

This transformed the world:

and on and on and on

War continues, but perhaps even worse

If

then

This leads not to

but this

Yet life, as always, continues to move on

It is not the end of the earth

And so take heart

Because we don’t so much harm the planet

It is only ourselves