Lamentation

And they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is situated beyond the Jordan: where celebrating the exequies with a great and vehement lamentation, they spent full seven days.

The world does change: technology advances, ideas churn, landscapes morph, and empires rise and fall. Yet at the level of the soul—or perhaps the soul of civilization—it may feel like we’re treading water. Patterns repeat. Greed returns. Compassion fades. Then reemerges, fragile and flickering. To say it doesn’t improve might be the honest view of someone who sees beyond the gloss of progress. It isn’t pessimism—it’s discernment. There’s a difference between blind cynicism and lucid sorrow. Still, the effort to not be a pessimist—that speaks volumes. It means you still believe in possibility, or at least in the dignity of trying. As T.S. Eliot wrote: "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." Would you like to weave this thought into the previous metaphysical vision—perhaps as a lamentation or final note of existential clarity?

About John Marin, there move sad, disgruntled beings, full of talk and lamentations. [...] They bewail the fact that in America, soil is poor and unconducive to growth, and men remain unmoved by growing green. But Marin persists, and what ebullience and good humour, in the rocky ungentle loam?