5.28.2003
I'm in Laguna Beach, getting set for my brother’s wedding this weekend, and his 40th birthday tomorrow. A week of milestones. My part is small.
I'll raise a toast, give presents, stand up for my new sister-in-law, and watch, proud-as-a-parent as my brother launches into the next phase of his life like a cannonball. Not content with just the two major events this week, he quit smoking yesterday in a celebration of life and promise for the future, and they are expecting a child in September. My brother is not content with cautious moves, small steps.
I’ve put together a book of photos and stories from his first 40 years. Doing this, I’ve come to realize that somehow my small collection of our childhood photos is all that we have. For a time, my mother and us two kids moved quite a bit and after one of these moves realized that we had lost our box of photos from her wedding and our lives. Only a few survived, but I always imagined that we each had our own private collection.
It's nice to have the few that we do. And now I won’t be the only one who can pull them out and look at them. I search the faces for signs of the people we have become. Was trouble visible in the freckled face of the sun-browned girl in an Easter dress holding her little brother? Or was it too early to see it then? How about later, after the divorce, is there sorrow in those eyes? Was my destiny to wander quiet landscapes, to live this unordinary life written on that brow?
When I look at my brother's young face I see sweetness and a hint of sadness. All still there. He always felt more deeply than I did, and carried a knowledge of himself in the world that grounded him, even as he knew clearly the trouble that surrounds us all, and all too well the troubles that surrounded us then.
The photos are sweet and nostalgic, but there is too much that is left out. A photo claims to capture a moment, but all that it does is capture an image. Even stories I've remembered from my brother's life tell partial truths. They relay moments and actions as if they were unconnected with all the moments that came before them, and all that would come later. The way I know my brother lives in a lifetime of knowing: of gestures and words, fights and gentle companionship, sorrows shared and games played. If I remember climbing an avocado tree in our front yard, it isn’t a single story that comes to mind, but a feeling that holds my brother and I together, the way the cool branches of that tree held us, not on a single day, but over years and days and hours spent in quiet solidarity while the world around us raged.
posted by Lisa on 8:16 AM link |
5.25.2003
I heard a story last night that stayed with me through dreams and sleep. This is a story you will not see on the evening news.
A young teenager killed another teenager. It was initiatory killing, showing the gang that he was worthy, he could take a life. He went to trial and was convicted for the murder. After sentencing, the mother of the boy he had killed stood and faced him--said, "I'm going to kill you."
After a short time in prison this same woman began to visit him--asking him how it was for him in there, giving him some money to make it easier for him as he had no family. She kept up these visits over the years and when it was time several years later for him to be released (he was very young and received a short sentence) she asked him what he would do when he got out. He had no plans. She found him a job with a friend. She asked him where he would stay when he got out. He had no where to go. She offered him a room in her home.
He got out of prison, went to work for her friend and stayed with her in her home. After some time, the woman called him into the living room. She asked him if he remembered what she had said to him in the courtroom on the day of his sentencing. He said that he would never forget it, that he thought of it every day. Then she told him that she finally felt that she had succeeded.
She said that she wanted to kill the young man who would take a life, and that was why she began to visit him, to show him kindness, to have faith in him--to develop his own faith in humanity and in himself. Over the years, she worked on killing the other self that had no regard for life. She told him that she had no son any longer, and asked the young man standing in front of her if he would be her son. He agreed and she adopted him as her own.
This story comes from the "other America" that Langston Hughes evoked--the America that still holds our dreams, the America that promises liberty to every one, the America that holds our imaginings of what our land can be. This is a story that holds hope and shines light into that dark place in the nightly-news-america which would have us believe that the prisons are full of evil people, unredeemable, unreachable, unlike the rest of us; that the truest response to victimization is a call to vengeance. This story comes from that dreamed America, discordant, promising.
posted by Lisa on 10:23 AM link |
5.21.2003
A small group of bloggers who often write about and around "place" are talking amongst ourselves, working on ideas that will resolve into some sort of community of "place bloggers". We've taken some of our recent posts about place and nature public in a group way on Carnival of Vanities.
There are eight of us posting over there: Fragments from Floyd, Cassandra Pages, both Numenius and Pica at Feathers of Hope, Bowen Island Journal, Notes from an Eclectic Mind, and Sainteros.
Susanna at Bias Blog gave us a special section all our own and Cassandra Pages provided this heading:
Place bloggers write, on one level, about the place where they live: its ecology, its beauty, the particular quality of nature in that place, and their relation to it. On another level, place bloggers are concerned with larger questions of ecology and land use, the future of the environment, and human beings' relation to (or alienation from) the world we inhabit and share. And on a still deeper level, many place bloggers are exploring the whole notion of "place" itself: where and what is this elusive idea of "place", in its broadest sense, and what does it mean to us as spiritual beings in perpetual search of something called "home"? We invite you to explore with us...
Oh...I should mention that this week's Carnival of Vanities has a total of 56 posts. I haven't read them all yet, but I've found many worth reading...
posted by Lisa on 7:09 AM link |
5.20.2003
This Place
I don’t know a garden snake from a garter snake. Sometimes I walk in poison oak. I’m not a trained naturalist, botanist or biologist. Yet I live inconveniently “in nature”, and nature is often central to my writing. The question is why. Why write about it, why read about it?
Nature is beautiful and awe-inspiring, unpredictable and even dangerous. But that doesn’t explain this focus on place.
Nature comes from the French ‘nature’ for birth, we call her Mother Nature because symbolically she holds our origin both in story and cultural history. In myths and rituals, initiates usually leave the nest of the family and venture out into nature to be tempered by the fires of initiation and to find their own true “nature”. The natural world they encounter isn’t just a beautiful place where they find contemplation and peace, it’s a world where beauty and danger lie next to each other, where relationships are complex, where every act of life includes inevitable death. The family, at its best, has protected the young person from the dangerous truths of the world, and from want. In ritual, nature teaches truths that a young person needs in order to be whole and to take their place in the larger community. Those stories used to be integral to our knowing about the world, to the thread of life that goes back to the beginning.
We’ve known things about our relationship to nature that have been forgotten or left behind in our drive to progess. In the United States we swept west, not only dominating the landscape but wiping out the cultures that came before us--cultures that respected the natural world and sought to live in harmony with it by their practices and in their rituals. We had “progress” in mind, and that has been the driving force in our culture until recently. Now many of us have noticed that something is wanting in our paradigm.
We feel something missing in our spirits as individuals out of balance with the world around us. We’ve found ourselves looking around for a way of life that might be more fulfilling. We’re reassessing our place in the world, asking ourselves where we fit into a larger picture that includes the earth as Mother—container of all life.
Even as a culture we’ve discovered that we’ve been short-sighted in our relationship to the earth. We’ve looked at it as a place with resources that need “managing”. Those resources turn up in short supply over and again, and those who look ahead know that we must discover systems that replenish the planet if we are to survive and thrive.
We are remembering. Remembering that the very ground we walk on gives the spirit a place to stand. The relationship between who we are and where we are is vital. Without a connnection to that ground we are disembodied. Culture and art are the mind and nature is the body.
This weekend I watched as a shodo sensei (calligraphy teacher) wrote the phrase ‘Harmonious and Joyful Heart’. The character for harmony is a mouth next to a bowl of rice.
When the earth provides rice and people have enough to eat, that is harmony, or peace. I’m amazed at the simplicity of this sign. Harmony isn’t some lofty, esoteric ideal, it’s rooted in man’s relationship with earth to provide food for her sustenance. That implies that in turn man cares for the earth so it’s able to grow food not just for this year and next but for his grandchildren’s grandchildren. The sensei told us that he learned this meaning, and the meaning for all of the characters as an adult, through his own study. He was amazed that they had these deep meanings, and that he didn’t know them. He said that he tells his students here, “Go back to Japan. Teach them the meaning.”
We are remembering. Remembering vital connections that root us to our cultural past, and our divine meaning. Remembering the harmony that connects us with the future, and remembering the mystery and passion that bind us to this place.
posted by Lisa on 8:32 AM link |
5.19.2003
Poem Without a Title
Charles Simic
I say to the lead
Why did you let yourself
Be cast into a bullet?
Have you forgotten the alchemists?
Have you given up hope
In turning into gold?
Nobody answers.
Lead. Bullet. With names
Such as these
The sleep is deep and long.
Warrior's Light
Rumi
Jafar, Muhammad's cousin, was a warrior of concentrated
light. When he rode up
to a walled city, it was no more to him than a gulp of water
in his dry mouth. This
happened at Mutah. No one went out to fight him. "What's
to be done?" the king asked
his clairvoyant minister. "If you strap on your sword
with this one," replied
the advisor, "also wrap your shroud around you!" "But
he's only one man!"
"Ignore the singularity. Look with your wisdom. He
gathers multitudes, as stars
dissolve in sunlight." Human beings can embody a collective, a majesty
of spirit, which is not like having a name or a body.
A herd of onagers may display
a thousand antler points; then a lion comes to the edge of
their field: they scatter.
posted by Lisa on 6:59 AM link |
5.17.2003
I thought summer was upon us. After all, we had some sweet hot days followed by fog, and the Giants lost 5 games in a row which annually means June Swoon. But the Giants got unsteadily back on their injured feet, and the summer heat and fog pattern has given way to a more springlike unpredictability.
The Ospreys that nest just below the Perth trail in Inverness' First Valley have one very small chick. We haven't put a scope on it yet, but I can report that it is gray, small and eating well. The pair that nested just off the trail are bothered more by passerby, but the contents of their nest remain hidden high from view. I wonder if there is an Osprey-webcam anywhere.
We looked at a house in Marshall yesterday. It faces Hog Island and the wind. The neighbor's dock has a subscription wind gauge which pages windsurfers when the wind reaches a certain speed. It probably happens regularly.
The caspian terns are back, raising the bar for competitive fishing.
My soon-to-be sister-in-law asked me how tan I am right now. The bridesmaid's dress I'll be sporting in a couple of weeks is beige and apparently looks ghastly with less-than-tan skin. My southern california family doesn't understand that I live in an icebox of a cabin, that even when the sun is hot the peninsula is windy, and that lying in the sun went out with the ozone layer and doing jello shots. In the week before the wedding I'll have to do lots of surfing. It seems okay to get a bit of a tan while doing something athletic, but lying in the sun just for the sake of a tan is strictly forbidden, or at least a family secret.
posted by Lisa on 7:58 AM link |
5.14.2003
The Dancer Upstairs
John Malkovich directed, and if you were ever drawn to him before, now you will know why. This film turns slowly like a dancer--measured, mesmerizing, evocative. Although the story is about terrorism, the movie refrains from any kind of polemics, because Malkovich believes that terrorism can't be justified by polemics. The hidden text is that the movie is an homage to Costa Gavras' State of Seige and that the story is vaguely based on Peru and Sendero Luminoso, from a book of the same name by Nicholas Shakespeare.
The main character is a policeman played by Javier Bardem, named Rejas. At one point in the film he and the dancer, Yolanda, sit in a cafe--walls hung with portraits. On each table is a guide to the "identity" of each person. They take turns guessing the identity of each face. That one is a thief, but you think he's a student, that one's an engineer, who you thought was a murderer. The Dancer Upstairs is all about ambiguity and identity. Rejas' wife sells cosmetics, and hangs polaroids of herself all around the bathroom trying to decide which kind of nose she'll order for herself in dreamt-of surgery. She and her friends know that one can do much to the face to mask the identity within. What Rejas learns is that although the identity is masked, it cannot be hidden. The terrorist group in the unnamed country hangs portraits too. From streetlights all over town hang dead dogs with signs claiming "Long Live Ezekiel" and sometimes an Emmanuel Kant quote.
The word violence carries too much weight now so that its meaning is obscured. The word can hardly be used--it means both too much and too little. But that is the word that I want to use to describe the acts of terror. They obliterate what was and replace it with ruin and pain and devestation, all in a moment. Nothing I've seen on film gets that right like this does. Malkovich gets across the idea that to the terrorist, the act of terror is performance art, and the human consequences are irrelevant.
The camera loves Rejas' face. The sorrow and knowledge in that face hold the film. All of life passes in front of those eyes. And what is left there at the end is the ruin. As Malkovich says, "that's what life is, life is corruption."
posted by Lisa on 7:49 AM link |
5.12.2003
I spent time yesterday in some of the neighborhoods of Berkeley and San Rafael. It was a perfect Bay Area day--sunny and blue-skied. Often I wonder if I ever decide to move "over-the-hill" where I would go, and I played this game. Some time, I tell myself, the solitude of Inverness might turn to isolation. I may want to be more involved with other people, closer to movies, theater, the city. And then I might want to give up the country life for a quiet, charming neighborhood. Would I choose funky Fairfax, convenient and more urban San Rafael, or would I..dare I really give over to the impulse and move to the east bay, where I'd be in the company of folks like me rather than Marin millionaires and Humvie soccer moms?
As I drove with my friends through these towns I played the wonder game. Every neighborhood had its charms, cute porched-houses, beautiful gardens, nearby parks, and everywhere that sunshine. The other Inverness wonder is whether this winter without sun will be the last I can take. Just how many cords of wood will it take, how many damn fires will I have to build?
I was still wondering when I arrived back home. Filled with ideas of book and coffeeshop proximity, of getting to a movie in 15 minutes rather than 45, of friends dropping by. It had been a long day with perhaps a little too much sun, and I was tired. But the dog needed a walk so we headed to the beach.
Pow. The wonder. When my eyes took in the great expanse of blue Tomales Bay I felt something unhook. Visions of sunny neighborhood days drifted away like dreams leaving my morning bed. Palpable relief flooded my wondering mind through the prosperity of sight--healing water. Like a gut punch, with a struggle to the surface for air, I remembered that I was home.
posted by Lisa on 7:25 AM link |
5.11.2003
Tired of taking Mom to brunch? Why not take her to a peace vigil and celebrate Mother's Day true to the original spirit of the holiday.
Julia Ward Howe first proposed Mother's Day as a day for women to unite around the idea of peace. The popularity of the day came and went and until the early 1900's when Anna Jarvis began a big push for a nationally recognized Mother's Day in honor of her mom, who had tried to establish 'Mother's Friendship Days'--an attempt to heal wounds caused by the Civil War.
Finally, in 1914 the US House and Senate passed a Mother's Day resolution. Originally, women wore a single carnation, white for deceased mothers and colorful carnations for living mothers. By 1923 Ann Jarvis was fighting against the forces of commercialization. She sued one mother's day festival and was arrested for disturbing the peace as some "war mothers" sold carnations at another event. Jarvis was especially disgusted by ready-made greeting cards as substitutes for letters we were too lazy to write ourselves.
"This is not what I intended," Jarvis said. "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit."
Mother's Day deserves to be reclaimed for its original intention. It's a holiday created by activists. Julia Ward Howe clearly saw women as the natural enemies of war, and wanted to mobilize that nurturing spirit to create peace. Anna Jarvis wanted to celebrate the strength and endurance of mothers.
Is Mother's Day lost forever to Hallmark, FTD, and fancy but marginal restaurants overlooking the water? I'm not holding out much hope in my family. My mother flew home from a fun week in New York so my brother wouldn't "miss out" on the opportunity of taking her to brunch. For my part, I sent candles and a hand-written card. So the candles will shine brightly at a dinner party, and not at any vigil, but maybe in my family, that's the best we can do.
Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
posted by Lisa on 8:06 AM link |
5.09.2003
Numenius at Feathers of Hope picked up the thread from the dual post that Fragments from Floyd and Field Notes blogged forth the other day. He also commented over at Meta Popdex:
Blogging is a great medium for writing about place: you will never run out of material, and over time the fragments from your posts will build up into quite a portrait of the place you have ties to...
I would love to see this category coalesce more as a genre. Working collaboratively like you [Fred at Fragments from Floyd] and Lisa have done in your DuoBlog today is a good step towards this.
I agree Numenius. Over the last weeks, as we wrote about that billboard on a mountaintop, and talked about when to post and where, I've thought more about the blogosphere and my place in it than I'd previously done. Where do I fit in to this universe of bloggers, and where do I want to fit in? Do I care if my blog is a cul-de-sac?
This is certainly old news for other bloggers, but blogging is as much about linking and commenting with other blogs as it is about writing. As a 'blog of place' I haven't given much thought or attention to that. But there's no reason that we (place bloggers) should be immune to that interconnectedness. It's empowering to know that I'm being read, it gives me a sense of greater value when I sit down to write.
I haven't wanted to succumb to an incessant log-checking, link-tracking, popularity driven blog need. I'm worried that if my readership builds I'll feel compelled to write on days when writing doesn't fit in with my life just so I don't lose visitors. I want to continue to write about what's pulling my attention, and when, and I'm not sure what effect more readers will have on me. And, I worry about being pulled time-wise. My business takes a lot of time, and I have a dog to walk, and books to read, and walks of my own to take, a kayak tied up to the pier waiting for me, and on and on.
Yet, over the last few days I've been swayed that some community-building is in order. I sit here in Inverness writing about my place on the earth, while other Bloggers of Place and other lovers of some place sit in respective spots around the world. We can collectively build quite a portrait of every place.
At the same time, we can write about particular ideas and build upon them. Blogging in general strikes me as a glancing, shallow series of strikes. I get anxious when I contemplate the endless stream of entries, the vast catching-up that's required, like a never-ending, ever-growing TO DO LIST from hell or the one-inch feed at the bottom of a news screen. But alongside this stream, or inside of it, we can also feed our need for a deeper, more meaningful dialog where ideas build upon each other. We can develop a mosaic that reveals a larger picture, rather than post-modern patterns which may leave the soul wanting.
posted by Lisa on 8:33 AM link |
5.08.2003
Recently, transcripts have been released from behind-closed-doors hearings that took place alongside the public hearings instigated by Joseph McCarthy. Amongst them is a transcript of a hearing with Langston Hughes.
It's a stunning display of the difference between the poetical and the stark. Ray Cohn and Senator Dirksen grill Langston Hughes about the meaning of certain poems and columns he has written going back over his entire life. They take individual lines from poems and from essays and ask him to defend them, to explain their meanings, and ask him if he believes them, or if he believed them at the time he wrote them, and if they might unduly influence people's thinking. It would be comical if these people weren't in power how dense they are about the ideas of poetry, or rather the idea of ideas.
Here they take the following lines from the poem, 'Goodbye Christ',
Listen, Christ, you did all right in your day, I reckon
But that day is gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
And called it the Bible, but it is dead now.
The popes and the preachers have made too much money from
it. They have sold you to too many.
and ask Hughes if he thinks the book is dead. He tells them that the poem is satirical. They counter asking if some people could take it wrong. He tells them that poetry can be taken different ways by everyone who reads it. He asks if they'd like to know what he was thinking when he wrote it.
Dirksen replies, "Of course, when all is said and done a poem like this must necessarily speak for itself, because notwithstanding what may have been in your mind, what inhibitions, whether you crossed your fingers on some of those words when you wrote them, its impact on the thinking of the people is finally what counts."
It's a sobering read and I recommend that you take the time (30 minutes maybe) to read it.
And just to get you in the mood, here's one of Langston's best:
(or listen to an amazing version of it here delivered by Orland Bishop.)
Let America be America Again
--Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!
posted by Lisa on 8:42 AM link |
5.06.2003
The following is a dual post. We’re writing about this image – an ad published in Blue Ridge Magazine advertising North Carolina. A link at the end of this post will take you to my duet partner.
* * *
Now Showing: Sunset and Clouds
At first glance, the ad beckons to me like a seduction. It says forget the distractions of culture and commerce. You don't need a romance film or a Las Vegas vacation, all you need is what's been here all along: sunset and clouds. If you take the time to look at the sky with the same focused expectation you give to a movie or a Vegas headliner, you'll be amazed at the show. Hey, nature is the best show, the only show you ever really need!
The 50's marquis takes me back to a time when life was simpler, when our needs were fewer--an unspoiled time. Unspoiled time implies unspoiled nature, and nature is spoiled in many places, but, the ad says, not in North Carolina. It promises a return to the simpler values of nature before commercialization turned everything into a product--and a relief from the distractions of modern culture.
But peel back a layer and see that the very presence of the marquis has already spoiled nature, the proclamation 'Sunset and Clouds' has turned it into a product, upending the entire revisionist serenity. It's nature disconnected from spirit, critical thought, and cultural context, nature as visual sound bite—an adman’s hook.
Nature as scenery doesn't need protection--if all we require of her is nice views then anything can sit outside the borders of the "view corridor". Taken along with all the other vacation ads in the culture, where the mythical consumer of vacations is looking for a series of breathtaking yet relaxing moments of feeling safe and pampered, this ad doesn't need to set a lounge chair in the foreground, it's implied, and in this case, may even come with a drink holder. Just as an ad for a Puerto Vallarta resort excludes scenes of poverty from down the street, the North Carolina ad omits scenes of polluted rivers and coastal development.
We’re comforted by the certainty that North Carolina has put this show together for us: nature as attraction. The state has prepared this venue for our vacation enjoyment, and that implies that North Carolina is responsible for the skies, for the scenery, and that they, in turn, must also be responsible for protecting and ensuring natures' continuance. This turns us into the "viewer", with zero responsibility for nature's condition, preservation, or future. Somebody else is in charge. No longer must we worry that we’re not driving a hybrid or giving enough to the Sierra Club --sunset and clouds have been taken under the state's wing. To show our support for this endeavor, all we need to do is vacation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and enjoy the fruits of nature's bounty: sunset and clouds.
And if the state is responsible, boy, the sunset and clouds better be damned good. We'll be comparing the show to Zigfried and Roy and The Lord of the Rings. Better be one hell of a sunset or we'll be mighty disappointed.
Our cultural heritage culminates here. What we now call nature used to be called wilderness. But it's not so wild anymore. We've “tamed” most of it, and what's left we've set aside in neat packages called parks and wilderness areas. Hardly anything dangerous lives in it any longer--we've made sure that we're at the top of the food chain. Instead of inhabiting a natural world, we presume to allow nature to inhabit our world. As if she were our child, we argue over her future, and our policies towards her protection. As a culture, we've forgotten to respect what came before us, and that of which we are just a part. Finally, we're marketing "sunset and clouds" next to Julia Roberts' smile. In small, consumable bites, nature is ours to package and sell, and ultimately, to control.
Sunsets and clouds are nature at her most showy, superficial self. Sunset and clouds can be seen from an outdoor cocktail bar. No understanding of ecosystems, trans-continental migration, or even the changing of seasons are required: only that we look up, and certainly not that we look within.
Nature is capable of putting on a great show, but her real treasures remain hidden from the casual viewer. The ad beckons to us with promises of revelation, but nature’s promise is more discreet. She reveals herself over time spent on hard-scrabble walks, after hours spent lying in grasses and listening to birdsong. She reveals herself only to the careful heart, the watchful soul. And as a wise woman once said, “Better to wander alone in the wilderness than follow a map made by tourists.”
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Now for a perspective on this ad that’s more immediate and geographically personal: Fred First lived in North Carolina for seven years, and has landed in nearby Virginia. He keeps a lively, beautifully written blog over on Goose Creek that I’m sure you’ve heard of: Fragments from Floyd. Read his piece about the buying and selling of nature. We’d both love to hear your comments.
posted by Lisa on 5:18 AM link |
5.05.2003
There's a sick red-throated loon on the north end of Chicken Ranch Beach. It's just sitting in the sand and didn't budge when my dog and I walked within 6' of it. The breeding plumage is stunning. I ran into neighbors who said they planned to call somebody--I'm not even sure who that would be.
On my beach I spotted a bright orange red-sponge nudibranch Rostanga pulchra. They take on the color of the sponge they feed upon and this one was a perfect match with the sponges here. I've never seen one before. They're quite an ugly and astonishing animal. I've surprised myself by becoming quite fond of slugs and their brethren--the slug-like. I remember the first banana slug I ever saw. One morning not long after I'd moved to west Marin I found one on my car window and thought I was having a bad dream. In southern California snails are small and politely wear shells. I've since learned that here in northern California it's a rite of passage for little kids to lick banana slugs to experience for themselves the numbing qualities they impart to anyone who might think about tasting them. It's a virtual shell and far more effective a protection from predators. When I pick them up to remove them from my oregano and basil plants they also leave a gelatinous resin that's difficult to wash off my hands. They're an important part of the old-growth forest, recycling decaying plant matter.
Slugs and nudibranches are true bottom-feeders. When you peel back the layers of the rhetoric about point reyes national park, the "jewel of the national park system", and peer beyond the "great views" found here these are some of the storied creatures you'll find. There are others: the invasive european green crab which eats voraciously and competes with (and feeds on) dungeness crabs, and the olympia oyster which used to cover the shores and bottoms of Tomales bay and the San Francisco bay but was overharvested and mostly depleted by 1911. The olympia oyster was California's only native oyster. There's a project underfoot to reseed them here.
More "peeling back the layers behind the view" in tomorrow's post.
posted by Lisa on 1:46 PM link |
5.04.2003
If you drive out Pierce Point Road and turn at the sign 'Marshall Beach' you'll find a modest gravel road from which you can see forever. We brought my dog and found that we couldn't take her on the trail down to the beach itself, so we just walked back along the road that parallels the northern finger of the peninsula. To the right we could see all of Abbott's Lagoon and the upper snaking reaches of Drake's Bay with a Pacific backdrop; ahead was Mt Vision still misted at the top with wet cloud cover; and to the left Tomales Bay and Marshall on the far side, with lupine colored hills, Walker Creek, the Audobon land and green hills stretching away south to Elephant Mountain in the distance.
In a couple of days, I'll be dual-blogging with Fragments from Floyd about the problems we run into when we treat nature as just another pretty view and other fine points on the tango of nature vs culture. But yesterday was a day for enjoying the view. I would argue that our intimate and curious relationship with the places we could see, and the act of walking through it added a dimension to our view-hunting that set it apart from a national park "drive-by viewing".
The current issue of Utne Reader has an article titled The Greening of Tony Soprano (unfortunately not available without a subscription - hey Utne, what's up with that?) which talks about the blossoming field of ecopsychology, where our psychological pain is directly linked to repressed suffering about what we're doing to the planet as we go about our business. The author makes a great case for what ails Tony Soprano, from the show's opening drive from industrial to suburban New Jersey, Tony's angst when the ducks leave his backyard, and even a great explanation about why Tony and Carmella named their daughter 'Meadow'.
I'm rambling all over the place today, like an old pickup truck wandering around a hayfield.
Along the way we saw some red-tailed hawks, american goldfinches, savannah sparrows, osprey, some turkey vultures, and a marsh hawk. As we left we explored a road that the map says ends up at Duck's Landing. We ran into an 'Authorized Vehicles Only' sign and turned about. Tucked away against a hillside was a small herd of beautiful axis deer. These are the reddish-brown deer with white spots that look an awful lot like the Bambi deer. They are more rarely seen around here, unlike the ubiquitous black-tailed and fallow deer. They're native to India, and were introduced here in about 1947, according to Jules Evens. A quick look in the book tells me that this is one of the reliable places to see axis deer. Whadya know?
posted by Lisa on 9:58 AM link |
5.03.2003
Another storm arrived in the night. It no longer feels like spring, but I guess this is just a defining part of spring as wildflowers and the first warm days were. Today I'm thinking about old friends in far away places. When I left my home in Nayarit, a friend said of my sadness, "Just think of this as a place in the world where you have a lot of friends." I do, but that doesn't make me less sad, only more so. If I were to follow my feelings of longing to return to all the friends whom I've loved, and places I've been drawn to or called home scattered around the world I'd never stop moving.
At some point, you just have to settle in somewhere. What I'm learning about "settling down" is that it's equally about adjusting to the loss of where you're not as it is about deepening the connection to where you are. So as days have the quality of music to them, this one feels like a lone violin. It's searingly beautiful, but like anything too beautiful, it has it hurts.
So I think of the people whom I love. They live on the edge of this same continent, but removed from me by a coastline thousands of miles long. When I close my eyes, I hear whispers from that sweet lost intimacy. When I close my eyes, I see men on horseback riding down a dry riverbed near my home. When I close my eyes, I am there, but when I open them, I am always here.
posted by Lisa on 9:45 AM link |
Copyright 2003, 2004, 2005 Lisa Thompson. All Rights Reserved.
