Tuesday, July 10, 2012
A nest of robins in her hair...
I had been planning to join the Occupy Guitarmy on their march from Philadelphia back to New York, but went to the Koch protest instead. I've been following their exploits however and was saddened but not surprised to see this picture of an encampment on a facebook page, no doubt an inadvertent commentary on the death of trees from air pollution:
I thank Steven Earl Salmony, a good and respected friend I have met only in the cyber-kingdom, for sending me this video. It has made me wonder whether perhaps one of my earliest memories - hearing my mother's voice reciting the first poem quoted - had something to do with my abiding love, awe, and respect for trees. Oh and don't miss the obituary at 22billionenergyslaves, which is eloquent, and timeless.
Beautiful music and imagery, but I have a bone to pick with some of the words. The "leaving down to them" comment from Teddy Roosevelt. That comment implies ownership, as though it's Humankind's to hand down. It is not. We don't own it. Ideally, we should reside in harmony with all life and non-life, but never should we portend to own it and thus, hand it down to others so that they will own it, in turn.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, it rankles me when Humans project their own failings onto something that in no way possesses the same failings. I'm referring to the comment about Nature taking revenge. Nature doesn't take revenge, but the God of the Abrahamic Traditions, and many other Gods, do take revenge, and perhaps that comment is a legacy of such destructive thought. I don't think of Nature as a deliberate and sadistically vengeful entity, although its violence is ferociously awesome. It feeds us, and kills us, but without malice or forethought. It is from whence we came and it is to what we will return.
Unspeakable beauty.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Anon- not necessarily the poems I would have chosen other than the first, and even that has religious references that I can do without...but it has fond memories for me anyway, and it's the first context I've seen it where it wasn't painfully maudlin.
ReplyDeleteHi Gail.
ReplyDeleteAbout what Chomsky said: ”The general population doesn't know what is happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.” from 22billionenergyslaves blog, I say that "society" is completely DRUNK on oil. And drinking. So, like the women say in this culture, and surely many others' "Drunks do not feel the pain" neither the pain they are experiencing, nor the one they are inflicting. We are so drunk an so doomed. I have been watching/listening/reading everything on the Internet this week about Jonestown (wanted to know what happened)and I think that we already drank the potion. I think I understood that Jim Jones did not want to die alone. I am wondering who is the Jim Jones who is taking us all down with him?
All I hear about around me at this time is a frenzy of travelling by plane. Everybody is going to Europe and will travel many countries, discussing the cheap prices, and everybody else is in awe because travelling by plane is THE THING most revered of all.