drmstream[writing]

In the great scheme of things, how much do things really change?

Life was meaner and the time and space of human emo­tion more nar­row 130 years ago. But the essen­tial com­po­nents of the human con­di­tion were much like they were today.

I’m reminded of these things when I look at the pho­tos below. Peo­ple clus­ter by water, at the edges of con­ti­nents, and their energy shifts, the inter­nal flow of blood syn­chro­niz­ing to the steady pulse of the ocean, the tem­per­ate heat of the body adjust­ing to the fer­tile soup of the sea. From whence we came, we return: some pat­tern of cells dri­ven by our genetic code, at the very core of what our being is, goes back those mil­lions of years that we were just crawl­ing out of the water.

So in 130 years, there’s not much that changes in the rela­tion­ship between man and nature.

The antique pho­tos from the 1880’s are of Eas­ton Beach in New­port, RI; they can be found in a great col­lec­tion of old pho­tos main­tained online by the Prov­i­dence Pub­lic Library. The recent pho­tos are of the beach in Green­wich, CT this March on the first warm day of Spring.