AT THE FAR EDGES II
good morning starshine
6CO2 + 6H2O=C6H12O6 + 6O2
you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,
a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food
than apples-seeds -- the fruit
within the fruit -- locked in
like counter-curved twin
hazel-nuts?
Some people have normal everyday recurring nightmares like drowning in a tidal wave or being pursued by apes and sex fiends or wandering naked through a meeting of the local PTA. My recurring nightmare is crueler. I dream I have been sentenced to drive forever along the Connecticut turnpike. All exits have been sealed in concrete and I am doomed for an uncertain term to feed at the eight Holiday Houses between Stamford and Madison till at last I perish of sensory insult.
land of bright water
The little pieces of land on which he stands crumbles beneath his feet,
his forests dwindling, technological man turns once again to gaze upon his ancient home --
the vast and prolific tableland of the sea
THEY KNOW NOT WELL THE SUBTLE WAYS I KEEP,
AND PASS AND TURN AGAIN -- Although, because it is so mechanistic, the analogy of the internal work of a clock is inexact to describe the system by which living things maintain themselves, it may serve our purpose here. Think of solar radiation as being the force that winds the mainspring. With negligible exceptions, it is the only source of energy that living things have. The energy accumulated by the earth as it turns is distributed throughout the system. At each transaction there is an unavoidable loss of energy in the form of heat. Within the primary system, there is no such thing as an inessential wheel; each absorbs energy. When one wheel fails, the rest of the system stops. Within this, man is no more important than any other wheel
every little movement
While every thing and event contributes to this cosmic noise, each admits an identifying message and also a highly selective receptivity for only a selection of these multiple messages, while indifferent, or insensitive to others.
Through evolution, each organism has developed a concern for those messages which are essential to its living function and survival as species, while ignoring what is not biologically relevant nor useful. Accordingly, in any geographical area, many different species; bacteria in the soil, worms, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and the array of mammals, carry on their life careers, selectively recieving and responding to signals that are of concern to each species, while unaware of the many other messages that are being concurrently transmitted
Extractive industries clustered around sources of raw materials concentrations of minerals, stands of forests, or in the center of grasslands ans in the agrarian belts of the middlewest. The result of which was to increase the number of pollutants in each ecological area.
There can only be disaster arising from
unawareness of the causalities and effects inherent
in our technologies
When all these inputs, these economic zones are pieced together, they form a monster that no one foresaw, no one wanted, but which is now galloping through our environment. The I Ching says "No Blame"
Having constructed this monster out of old beliefs lying about the place, let us consider whether we can distinguish between real problems and imagined ones. A real problem is one in which we do not now have a solution
The "population problem" is, by this definition, not a real one in that we know how to solve it, and that in any event, whether we do much of anything, it will solve itself
They did this even when they no longer had any need for them; the symbols were the surrogates for the rocks piled in the cave against the coming of the night
Think of this system as being reinforced over and over through hundreds of thousands of generations and thousands of years, through social approval, ritualization and acculturation. That there was something basically wrong with this way of life may be exemplified by the fact that those who refused to subscribe to the accumulation and storage of things became the founders of the world's great religions
I find man utterly of what his wealth is or his fundamental capacity is.
He says time and again "We can't afford it."
For instance, we are saying now that we can't afford to do anything about pollution, but after the costs of not doing anything about have multiplied many fold beyond what it would cost to correct now, we will spend many fold what it would cost to correct it now
Throughout all of this, nature was the "enemy". The purpose of life of this strange creature we have described was to "conquer" nature, "tame" the wilderness, "make war" on pests and vermin, "control" the rivers.
Life was a battles against the elements, only the "fittest" survived. Whole species of other life forms, plants, insects, reptiles, fish, amphibians, birds and mammals were exterminated, most usually because they represented a "threat" against the accumulation of things.
Sometimes for sport
KING LEAR
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
THEY CALL THE WIND MARIA
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