How to Reconcile Contradictions?

The November days end in early darkness. Late afternoon, I close my laptop, comfort the cats with a handful of kibble, and pull on my jacket. The village lights glow: the few restaurants, a garage, a laundromat, the library. When I’ve reach the high school, the darkness spreads ubiquitously through the town forest that spreads up the hillside. Nearly all my life I’ve lived in New England, and yet the profoundness of this late autumn darkness always amazes me.

Later, I’m in the neighbors’ house who need some aid. As we stand talking in the well-lit rooms, I feel the house around us, the century-old vessel of wood and nails, a metal roof. Around us, the wind stirs through the evergreens. I walk back in the dark, my head bent against the cold channeling through the valley. All night, wind howls, the inexorable thrust of our world into winter.

While I read on the floor beside the wood stove, the cats keep me company, thinking their feline thoughts. Eventually, I turn off the lamp, and we three beings watch the fire’s flames through the stove’s glass door. Encompassing us, this profound darkness I will never comprehend. In it, our hearts beat on.

Here’s a few lines from David Truer’s “The Americas They Left Me” I read last night, in The Best American Essays, 2023.

This country is a terrible country, and this country is not…. There is a great ugliness on the land and also a great beauty. This country would and will do its worst at the same time it embodies the most nurturing habits our civilization has to offer. There is no reconciling these contradictions; they cannot be reduced or done away with. I must, we must, find a way to contain both.