SANDY AND NEWNESS

There is no more essential truth than this – that oldness is nowhere and newness is everywhere. This day, for instance, coming just after super-storm Sandy, is completely new, as fresh and new-fangled a day as ever dawned. The sunshine this morning will make light like it’s never been made before – a slightly different way of shining, a brand-new sparkle in its shine wherever I look. Breezes will blow across the streets and sidewalks in unprecedented patterns, and the last autumn leaves will find fresh ways to fall. Wholly new things will happen to me today – the way a person smiles as I pass, the way workers on the street shift and turn, the way a wandering cat carries itself. Even the dust on this laptop lies, at this moment, in outlines and designs that have never precisely existed before – never just the way they are just now, at 6:25 on this post-Sandy new-made morning.