As astronauts spend time in space, weightlessness causes muscle atrophy. With little or no resistance required to move, their muscles and bones harden and retract. Astronauts in their thirties can return to Earth with the bone density of people in their seventies. Specific biological and chemical reactions cause this, but in our conversation with the elements, we can perceive something deeper: that yearn as we do to shed the weight of the world, we need to be in the world to realize our dreams. Just as too much gravity is oppressive and crushing, the loss of gravity doesn’t free us but causes us to atrophy and disintegrate at an accelerated rate. Paradoxically, the only way to make it through the weight of the world is to stay in the world. –Mark Nepo, A CONVERSATION WITH THE ELEMENTS: Wisdom and practical guidance on opening to the world, Parabola, Winter 2012 / 2013. Photograph: Olive Cotton (1911-2003), Skeleton Leaf. 1964. Gelatin silver photograph, 24.7 × 19.6 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased with funds provided by the Photography Collection Benefactors’ Program 2006. © artist’s estate.
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As astronauts spend time in space, weightlessness causes muscle atrophy. With little or no resistance required to move, their muscles and bones harden and retract. Astronauts in their thirties can return to Earth with the bone density of people in their seventies. Specific biological and chemical reactions cause this, but in our conversation with the elements, we can perceive something deeper: that yearn as we do to shed the weight of the world, we need to be in the world to realize our dreams. Just as too much gravity is oppressive and crushing, the loss of gravity doesn’t free us but causes us to atrophy and disintegrate at an accelerated rate. Paradoxically, the only way to make it through the weight of the world is to stay in the world.

–Mark Nepo, A CONVERSATION WITH THE ELEMENTS: Wisdom and practical guidance on opening to the world, Parabola, Winter 2012 / 2013.

Photograph: Olive Cotton (1911-2003), Skeleton Leaf. 1964. Gelatin silver photograph, 24.7 × 19.6 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney purchased with funds provided by the Photography Collection Benefactors’ Program 2006. © artist’s estate.

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