Undying World

I don’t know.

I’ve been drawn into a number of conversations with people lately who are of the opinion that we have gone past the point of no return; that preserving our environment is a fool’s errand and as a species, we are unredeemable. Seemingly, there is no path that we can take that leads us away from ruin and moreover, we deserve our own destruction as a price for our neglect. I always take the other side of that argument. The earth and its humanity are worth it and we will solve our problems. I reject the premise that the only thing left in the face of our problems is to lay back and let the disintegration wash over us.

But in truth, I don’t know.

It is easy I suppose, to look at the problems of our world and feel surrounded by death, by fatalism. There are so many things wrong. We seem to have fallen or be falling and unable to rise.

This is not necessarily so.

Our lives are very short and we often only see through the lens of our own mortality. But the earth has a life beyond our scope and the universe is infinite.

At least I would like to think that’s how it is. Between adapt or die. I would like to think that we will adapt.

So the new series I’m launching here is, at its core, about hope. I don’t know entirely the shape it will take. I’ve started working with the idea of imagined landscapes that speak to the ambivalence. And hopefully I don’t start getting too into the “We will not go gently into this good night!” sort of speechifying. But time to get started…

I saw two wrens upon a tree,
Whistle and I will come to thee.

I whistled again and there were three,
Whistle and I will come to thee.

I whistled again and there were four,
You needn’t whistle any more.

For being frightened off they flew,
And there are none to show to you.

– traditional rhyme

Don’t it always seem to go
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,
Paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

– Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”