NEW SIGNS, NEW WORLD

"County Road", oil,
by Don Gray

 As we drove along the interstate this morning, there were signs I’d never seen before. Naming exits and streets and towns, these signs had actually been there for years, but, in a sense, they were as new as the new sunlight shining on them. After all, since yesterday, new dust had settled on them in brand new patterns, the weather had reworked them by further wearing them down, and the light was landing on them in ever so slightly new ways. In that sense, these were signs I’d never seen before, signs that were newly redecorated, rejuvenated, and actually remade in the hours and moments before we passed them. As I was thinking about it, the signs seemed to almost flash at us in their newness as we passed. I realized, later, that this suggests a startling fact about our universe – namely, the absolute and insuperable newness of all things. Despite my usual inability to notice it, there is newness everywhere – in signs on the interstate, in clouds assembling in the sky in ways no one has seen before, in cars covered with salt in patterns that are each, in some infinitesimal way, different from any previous pattern in the history of cars and salt. I couldn’t stop thinking about it as the day passed – this newness, this freshness, this utter novelty and originality of everything. It seemed like an astonishing life I was living, a life where starting fresh happens every second, a life in which all things – including me – are no more than one-second old!