Our Pessimistic Perspective

We don't usually post on the weekends. It's how we acquired the "bums" part of our name. But the report by the IPCC has had us thinking and talking for two days. What can we say? We know the stakes are incredibly high, but we've come to the awful conclusion that humans won't rise to the occasion. (Sorry, we don't mean to bum you out.) We just don't think it's possible. Even a profound leader (I signed the Draft Gore petition) can not erase the six billion lives that draw on every last resource this planet has to offer. It's simply too late, and there are too many of us who want the same things.

Do you know anyone who is really able to change their lives to save the planet? Who doesn't need a car to get to work? Who knows a better way to heat their homes? Who can stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere? Who grows their own food? Who will agree to zero population, even if it means that they won't have children? Sure there are probably a handful of people who might be able to hide away in the woods and try to grow their food (like us), but we still drive, heat our house, leave a substantial footprint. Roger and I are somewhat anomalous, something Life Magazine might have covered 40 years ago-- a delightful cover feature-- people who have fled the city for rural life in their retirement years. But for the first time in human history more than half the world's population lives in urban centers. How can we alter the course of human endeavors and both maintain what is, and inexorably change it all to save the planet? That's the quest, isn't it?

We don't think it can be done. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. We should. We must all work together so at the very least we might have a moment where we can all look at each other as kindred spirits on the same whirling planet in space, working toward the same goal, without the pretense of borders and religions to separate us. Because, that's all we've ever been, everything else has been a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Then, maybe, we can all go down holding hands. (And that would be the optimistic ending, folks.)

It Looks A Lot Like Last Year

eagle perspective

time without calendar
days of hunt and hunger

soon a mate in talons clasped
falling toward the sea
new year imperative

Hope you all had a fine New Year's Eve. We celebrated with good friends, food, wine, and a movie. Lots of good cheer, talk, politics, laughter and sadness.

For a sobering moment -- take a look at the New York Times moving tribute to the 3000 American soldiers who have lost their lives in combat. Go look at those faces and remember.

Also, a compelling read can be found over at Staying Alive.

It may be a new year, but unless we all work for peace and environmental health, it's going to look a lot like the old one.

Happy New Year.

New Wave

When I was the print adviser at the university, I worked with students who published the campus print media. Every year I met inspired young people who were simply compelled to produce newspapers, alternative press, poetry journals. They were incredibly bright, energetic, wild people. I felt lucky to work with them. Every summer a handful of these students stayed in town and committed themselves to putting together the back-to-school issue of the campus student-newspaper of record. They produced a high-gloss cover with an 80 page newsprint compilation of things that might be of interest to new and returning students. Often I was the only adult on the premises, so I became their confidant, their parent, their nurse. It's just the way it was.
One summer there was a shy student who was wearing two hats -- he had agreed to draw the cover art, and to manage the press production. Having one of those jobs is a lot of work, but two was really overwhelming. I watched him struggle with deadlines and the indifference of his production team. He was a bit awkward, not comfortable in his role, or even in his own body. Just that kind of kid. He would often come in and talk to me. I would have to remind him over and over to work on the cover art. It was my job to do that. He understood. We spent many a day together at the Press Center.

One afternoon he arrived in my office carrying a skateboard. It was the first time I'd ever seen him with one. He was very upset and stood there, pale and shaking. He told me he had taken his skateboard up to the top of campus and tried to ride it down to the Press Center. On his maiden voyage he had chosen the toughest hill on campus, fallen and slid all the way down on his side. He lifted his shirt and showed me some fierce lacerations and bruises. He had really injured himself, but instead of going straight to the Health Center, which he had walked past, he came to the Press Center. I sensed that he might have been in a state of shock. I went to get the First Aid kit, but realized that he really needed much more care than I could give him. So, I offered to drive him to Health Center. It was a bit of walk to where my car was parked. While we walked, he was in agony. He finally said that his pants were rubbing against other wounds and asked if it would be okay if he took his pants off. I said, "Of course, take them off, I don't mind. Do what you have to do, please." He did. So, there we were, walking down one of the campus sidewalks, a bloody student in his boxer shorts, and me talking calmly beside him. We must have been quite a sight. I took him to the clinic and they took him in immediately. He was pretty banged up and out of commission for a few days. When he finally made it back to the Press Center, he had his cover art drawing. It was a cartoonish, geeky guy surfing big ocean waves while reading a book. A nice image for a campus situated in a surf town, drawn by a young man who was trying to straddle those worlds.
I thought of that cover the other evening after Roger and I had been talking about about the times in which we live. I think we're all riding waves, but I'm not sure we can identify the wave we're on, or its origin. I don't know if there are any organic waves anymore, ones that arise out of the soil of imagination and then wash over the world-- a new idea, a new way of seeing. We live in a time where those kinds of waves have a hard time competing with the mass media, mass-produced wave machines. Little waves ripple in small circles like pebbles dropped on a pond, but most don't make their way to sea. I don't even know if it makes sense to say it, but sometimes I feel like we live in a time without waves. Britney Spears is generated by a wave machine, so is George Bush. Who isn't? I can hardly feel the organic pulse of movements anymore. What marks our time here now? Is blogging a movement? Was Time Magazine right, are we really the People of the Year? Can a few lines typed into into the ethers be a Magna Carta? a Declaration of Independence? a Guernica? Can a new wave arise and change the world, or have we stepped into a time without wave?