As this whole blog is (d)evolving into a celebration of sidebars, here’s another…But bear in mind as you read this, or anything else at all really, that there are no final “right” answers, though there are some that seem to fit our situations, both macro and micro, better…sometimes. IN the end how and what you choose to do becomes a matter of context and belief dancing together. Dying well, is as important or maybe even more important than living well. No matter, we have to do it, die that is. It is a requirement of living, it comes with your admission ticket. And so we can segue into ….Noah…maybe …it will be a bit of ramble. When I began all of this, it seemed to hang together, it seemed to make sense, at least for a few moments, a little sense only, but now…it’s more of an olio of notions looking for a point…but then is having a point really that necessary? Beside, it’s April fools’ Day....or it was just a moment ago..... Rabbit, rabbit.
As we bemoan the state and fate of the planet, our own and only lifeboat, our Big Blue/Green but increasingly brown earth or Gaia, in our longings and our fantasies we jabber about rescue vessels, “arks” and “rafts” and “parachutes”. All around us “climate change”, “resource depletion”, “social unrest”, et.al. and etc., etc. grind on relentlessly, as George Harrison says, “within you and without you.” Will collapse be long and slow, or swift, or stuttering? Take your pick. By all measures, the decline of our life sources, is well underway and will continue despite any of our “best”, efforts to retard or halt it. Most of us humans seem to equate saving the planet primarily with saving ourselves either as individuals, families, nations, races or even as a species. It’s a point of view that some of us believe probably needs more thorough discussion. Anyway. Whatever approaches and procedures and techniques and processes and programs are devised and proposed, all of them somehow seem, well, insufficient. It is preposterous and arrogant to imagine that we can, or should, for that matter, as IBM would have us attempt, “build a better planet”. The magnitude and intricacies of the conundrum of life on the planet is far beyond our puny capacity to correct or better it. The suggestions for interventions range from the practical and literally down to earth, to bizarrely fanciful, imagining not merely technological “miracles”, but “divine” intervention as well. There’s an extensive menu of approaches to choose from. Make your choice. I’ve opted for the down to earth.
Recently one of my housemates together with another close friend, flew across the continent to attend and make a presentation at a “permaculture” conference in California. “Permaculture” is a spicy and prickly mix of practice and philosophy that has attracted a wide range of folks from everywhere on the face of the planet. Most of it's advocates see permaculture as a way to protect and save, even restore and regenerate the earth from its increasingly degraded state. In fact, some of them believe passionately that permaculture is The Only Way to save the planet. IMO: those guys are yet another cadre of zealots close to if not actually far out on the fringe. Nonetheless.
This conference was a gala event in the permaculture world. It featured many if not most of the current “big names” in the field as well as some luminaries who are usually seen as supporters or friends of the movement. Despite its outrageously large “carbon footprint”, its outlines probably still visible somewhere near San Diego, the conference was as a big success, generating nearly universally positive commentary. (Here are some links.) As usual at permaculture gatherings among the attendees there were the cheerleaders, the grumblers and the doubters and the nit pickers…but that’s par for the course. When you have a big lumbering shaggy beast like permaculture, it’s bound to have its following flock of carrion birds and clusters of chirpers, as well as swarms of pests and cadres of dung beetles. All ecosystems have similar entourages of players and parasites. We’re all on the curve somewhere. But ya Gotta love them all. Together they make a sloppy, sexy whole. Open those mental and physical arms to embrace as many as you can. This conference was, overall, an important gathering of the tribe, if not equivalent to the delivery of the 10 commandments by a multitude of Moses’s (permaculture has its 12 ‘Principles” BTW). They compared notes, raised awareness and hopes, and shared some good tales. All of us still eating and sleeping and shitting have a seat on this train whether in first class, in coach or merely in the baggage car. No matter whether you are a true believer or not, now is the time to catch a seat on the local. So stay tuned, in whatever way and to whatever extent you choose, to catch each daily trip and keep an eye out for your stop.
And here is where my thought stream seems to waver but also to be tenuously connected to notions of saving the earth, ideas about arks and fancies about Noah. Maybe it’s just the scent of spring beginning to seep out of the soil stoning my sense, but as far as I can tell, Spring is still mostly hiding out somewhere in the hills of North Carolina. A friend of mine “down there” near Cherokee tells me the pears and cherries are in full flower. Around here I have seen some pale green daffodil shoots poking up through the mulch, but nothing else, not even a single crocus. Our pear tree’s buds are still challenging the remaining winter drafts, holding up their tiny, tight little fists to the grey skies. But with today’s temperatures finally up into the low 50s I’m going to chant something other than Ezra Pound’s “Winter is a comin’ in, louda’ sing goddamn.” The sweet smell of spring earth is tantalizing my taste buds this morning, even though the actual planting of seeds and popping in transplants in the open ground is still weeks away….. unless, that is, you have a greenhouse or a hoop house. A personal and private ark of life.
I’ve got one of the latter and it’s a tight little craft about 9’ by 12’. Its withstood heavy buffeting by winter winds and the weight of three feet of snow. It has been the source of a winter-long growing experiment or vanity project, depending on how you look at it. I have been keeping alive three dozen or so annual vegetable plants. They have survived temperatures bottoming out at zero and multiple nights in single digits. They are all “greens”….four varieties of lettuce, three varieties of chard, and a single gnarly-looking Russian Red Kale plant thrown in for the hell of it. If I want to give the entire enterprise an inflated psychological importance I could also describe it….with a mostly straight face…. as a confused manifestation of my relationship to the planet and my inflated sense of individual expression and control. But lately an unbidden visitor took up residence in the hoop house. Must have thought they had reached Shangri-la. And because of his or her presence I was confronted with having to consider matters of what Garret Hardin, the author of Tragedy of the Commons, calls “lifeboat ethics”. And in this instance I got to make the selection. I had come to a kind of Noah moment.
The first rule of being Noah, even a mini-Noah, is to acknowledge that room and resources on the ark are limited and tickets are really scarce and not actually for sale. and that if any are to survive then only some can survive; in short, not all creatures, including humans, make it onto the ark. This little critter
is one that didn’t make it, though obviously his forebears did. He wasn’t welcome in my particular lifeboat. Why? Well, I usually allow for a critter share of 10-15%. He took about 25% or more. The USofA is doing the same on the planet. So, what about us? We're certainly taking more than our share IMO. Not exactly the behavior of a thoughtful guest. How welcome are we? Are we welcome on the Big Ark? In the larger scheme of things it will be clear at some point to everyone that the Big Ark is going down, and that not all humans will make it onto the ark. It’s damn clear that we probably aren’t going to be invited on to the secret escape pods the corporate and military elites are supposedly building. It is likely, in fact, that there may not be any arks anywhere, at any cost. Truthfully, most of us on the Big Ark are really no more than ballast anyway. This is not a moral observation, but a factual one. AND the reality is that IF ANY humans are to survive, most of us will have to be thrown over the side. The BIG FACT is that our ark is mostly full of lifeforms other than humans and that the humans that are on board even now are beholden to these entities for our continued existence. How all of this gets sorted out in the next generation or so remains to be seen. But it will get sorted out one way or the other. Right now it seems to be that humans continue to believe that they are in the control business, when they can’t in fact, even manage the rescue business. What a sorry lot we humans usually seem to be when put under pressure, divine or otherwise. How each of us chooses to behave will become clear soon enough. I can feel that all of this is somehow relevant to the Noah myth but damned if I can spell it all out cogently right now.
BTW: As to the Noah story: I promised God not to spoil it for you by telling you how it ends.
Meanwhile there is this to consider:
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
~ Mary Oliver ~
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