Friday, November 27, 2009

In Front Of Our Eyes



I don't have to go out into the cities of industry with their opaque skies and brutal noise levels or to the mountain rivers where the salmon are dying to notice the changes in our environment which have taken place in, all things considered, only the few past years. I don't need to read the news about male small mouthed bass now having female characteristics, or the most recent addition to the endangered species list. Nor do I need to learn of yet another environmental violation to know there are many who think they can continue on in this ever escalating game of pillage for profit and remain unaffected. All I have to do is look out into my little garden and notice the redwood sorrel that now dies from lack of watering in the summer when a few years ago they needed no help from me to survive, or tip my head skyward to the diminished returning flocks of barn swallows and chimney swifts in the spring, or notice that the ever growing legions of cars has wiped out the sound of the ocean.

Every day, we loose something and what kind of void follows each loss? Every day excuses are made in the name of gain (who's gain?), and that which 'we' gain, what is it? A random void filler most likely. (The sound of cars where there once was silence? I'd call 'car noise' the void and 'noise stress' the void filler rather than referring to silence as a void, as some have been want to do.) As for random void fillers, I listened last summer to the recent novelty of hearing crickets chirping in dry soil which had always before remained too damp year round for their liking. I see this house being invaded by armies of piss ants looking for other than sugar, year round - this 80 year old house which has never seen colonies of ants within its walls before. What this house is experiencing is as nothing compared to other abodes out there in the world. Crickets are a sign of good fortune and piss ants are not venomous. Neither are toxic.

Whether we admit to it or not, whether those with the resources to do something about it acknowledge it or not, we have willfully engendered in our world too much loss and the effects of even the tiniest and most invisible of these losses touch every single person place and thing on this planet and beyond. Anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish.

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