We’re all sitting around trying to neutralize the smells emanating from various corners of
the multiverse we’ve been subjected to. In a past article I alluded to the Mariana
Trench, that ultra deep cravass in the ocean floor where creatures, the strangest of the
strange poke around vents. Luminescent creatures ghost about and somehow adapt,
survive.
Not that unlike our present moment where humanoid creatures avoid bumping into each
other by denying the reality that up is up and down is down. Point of view drifts in the
currents. Recognizable facts elude each other’s capture. Subterfuge directs defenses,
here one moment, gone the next. Nothing to avoid; it is all according to plan.
Nature remains quite interested in our abject perambulations across the globe. It
always has its work cut out for it: Adjust to whatever the present requires. Does it hang
on to what’s been created to protect itself from itself? Curious. It changes constantly.
We imagine large swaths of time being evolutionary epochs. That’s how nature loves it.
But mankind has become or is becoming indifferent. The rest of the animal kingdom
hasn’t the privilege of such indulgence. That hasn’t been the plan. But our indifference
in a big way to its sense of evolutionary order must be some sort of apostacy or violation.
But then there’s the evolution of faith and thinking that our powers give us great agency
to ignore and insult what’s provided, and blind our eyes to the immense acceleration in
suffering all around us. Suffering we are all responsible for. We may live in comfort in
our magnificent Shelburne Falls and surroundings, and we appreciate how blessed we
are. We are not in a place where half the population is starved for food and shelter. We
should not feel guilty about this: we have worked for the lives we’ve chosen.
Of course we don’t agree on everything. That’s as it should be. That condition will
never change despite the efforts of authoritarians. Equilibrium has two sides to it. We
work to achieve it if we’re thinking straight. Sometimes we see the need to stretch our
knowledge and perspectives and go against the norms. And sometimes we’re drawn to
the controversial and untested to find discovery, even the right paths for ourselves,
finding the experience of freedom. I find it in nature, mostly. First and foremost it lives
with itself. The most obvious is often the most profound.
Struggles surrounding us, no matter how distant, with the communications that exist
today affect the way we live our lives. We’re headed toward drone warfare where the
cruelty of death is distant. We wish to shield our lives from that which we cannot seem to avoid or prevent. Are we impuissant? Impotent in framing our reality the way it needs to be? The answer is no. But we have to make choices. Tell me what isn’t a choice. Yet there’s always the victims. The people who didn’t choose to be caught in the supremacy struggle. The righteousness of the principled, the inflamed, the oppressed, the forlorn, the defenders, all those who put up a wall or rebelled. The tragedy of war is the loss, the lives, the cultures whose works of art and substance lie buried. Go to a museum to see and understand our history.
I look back upon the events of my own life as I assume most of you reading this do. If
you haven’t taken yourself as seriously as you know you might have, time is always on
our side. I’ve grown weary of the inconsequence of disagreement that makes the best of
our lives and civilization harder to feel stable. The war perpetrated by Trump ignorance
and vanity, including the other major parties involved, is agonizing to endure. Our
resistance to it on the local level must be sustained and increased. I call it the Riot of
Resistance for peace. Of course “riot” becomes the opposite of its usual meaning.
Pundits speak out about the loss of American prestige. China looming larger on the stage, Europe forced to regroup, British colonies in the crosshairs of unconscionable actions, Russia watching and wishing, and the rest of us seeking a morality and spiritual place that is a tangible, uplifting antidote to the lies that the selfish and foolish buffoons use to make themselves and us callous to the immense costs.
The oceans, forests, plains, mountains, and skies await our turn toward their restorations. The vast populations of the world lie at the mercy of a world caught in its fantasies of power and the past. So folks, the time to act is NOW!
Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls.