Adding Insect to Injury

Following the lead of Max Ehrmann, a Midwestern sage from another era, Barbara Amiel sought in her latest column published today in Maclean’s to prove that, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Lady Black apologized. And for that, of course, the vermin and sluts should be grateful. In the midst of describing her stay in Chicago, she offers an apology very much in a style to which we’ve grow accustomed:

“I spend most of the day in the Everett McKinley Dirkson courthouse, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1964. Visionary though he was, van der Rohe did not envision wall-to-wall human beings bearing battery backpacks pressing up against the glass walls of his courthouse. From the inside looking out they resemble the clustered underbellies of insects attempting to crawl up windowpanes only to fall back, their antennae and legs sticking out at various angles. The eyes blink and mouths open as they shout questions, but just as one cannot hear the cries of insects so one cannot hear their sounds. I finally lost my temper with some and owe them an apology for ill chosen words they overheard, but it’s been a long haul.”

Hasn’t it just? I, for one, hope that the insects accept Ms. Amiel’s apology and do so without reservation or equivocation. (Not that their little voices would be heard.) Each of us, as Ehrmann pointed out, is a child of the universe; no less than the trees and the stars, we have a right to be here, and no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.