Read "Damage" by Wendell Berry online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It used to be that I could think of art as a refuge from such troubles. From the imperfections of life, one could take refuge in the perfections of art. One could read a good poem-or better, write one.
Art was what was truly permanent, therefore what truly mattered. The rest was "but a spume that plays / Upon a ghostly paradigm of things."