Thoughts of a Colorado Scorched Nihilist.

The fire had scortched her heart like it had seared the hillside.  The trees stood like black sentinels overlooking her downhill valley drive toward money.  Black sentinels that reflected the scar she had experienced in mentally giving up everything, yet winding up losing nothing.  They reigned on the horizon, and reminded her of the futility of it all.

Nothing felt better than being in the FJ.  Driving in the FJ made her feel in control, ready to drive away from any harm that came at her.  She could think in the FJ, knowing it was hers, her big blue ox, taking her into the forest, to remember her origins.

She loved her woman.  She loved holding her at night, hugging her tightly as her body became more toned - she could get closer to her lover's core as she lost weight, and it made the love linger longer in the morning.  The morning would come, bright with anticipation of newness, of birth, of hope, only to be dashed by chasing the money to give to a landlord and the debtors who don't care.

Death didn't seem like the end in nature the way it felt in the cultural construct of the mental framework of neurons derived from years of social conditioning.  She looked at the sentinel trees, lonesome in their death, yet their sacrifice gave more life to the understory, and the grasses and shrubs had already begun to fill in.  Death gave new life.  She thought of that, recalling a week prior releasing her father's cremains on the tundra.  His ashes lingered there for a while, defying the wind, and then dispersing to provide new carbon to the alpine.

Tomorrow she would have to return to the concrete palace of her monetary need.  She did not look forward to it.  She hoped it would be different, that something positive would happen, that the monotony wouldn't be as painful or as empty of meaning as the morning drive felt.  She hoped it wouldn't be hurtful, that kindness would discover her, that compassion would dance in her heart and she would remember the joy she had in lovemaking on her weekend.

Her lover's health concerned her.  She looked at her silent sleeping lady, curled up with the black cat stray who had chosen her, and wondered if she could ever provide the economic stability needed to make her lover not hurt so much physically.  She couldn't think of anything but to go back to school.  She wanted to provide for her beloved, for her beloved was the kind of soul-family that is so  perfect it defies logic and science.  It was a phenomenon, and it was to be treasured.  The cat placed his paw on her arm as she typed, and the silence of his love and her lovers arm wrapped around her waist was all she lived for.  It was divine, if there was divinity at all.

On the dusk drive not too many evenings ago, she saw an owl.  The owl looked right at her and her lover, as if to burn it's intense energy into them.  The owl healed the burn caused by the fire; it reminded the women of unity, of the greater picture.  But those symbols fade into the grey of concrete and cash and debt, and soon they were afraid once more.

The woman had woken this morning to the image of her beloved being t-boned in the corolla.  The corolla didn't have adequate protection from those kinds of impacts.  She received the call, coming from her in-laws, who the State had deemed next of kin.  She didn't even know her beloved hadn't made it into work.  She held her crumpled and cold body in the morgue, her tears falling on it's hard lifelessness.

What is the purpose of life?  To torture the soul with the hope of eternal love?  To taunt the inner child into believing it isn't broken?  All I know is that my beloved and my cats mean more to me than money, more to me than happiness, and more to me than false dreams of a broken childhood.

When A Tree Falls

When a tree falls in a forest, does anyone care?
Does anyone give a shit, about a tree?

All I have, all that I am, was given to me, by the planet I stand upon, and by Her trees. The green life. Every cell in my body, well, almost every cell, carries a small organ whose roots can be traced to some of the first beings on this planet which derived their energy from the sun. Via endosymbiosis, that purple photosynthetic bacterium became the mitochondria which were inevitably given to me by my mother, who got them from her mother, all the way back to the first female Homo sapiens.

Can you see the connection? Can you see the link?
The chain of evolutionary history traces my very existence back to photosynthesizing organisms, light-eaters, making me somewhat “one” with all present green life, albeit vaguely. The Matriarch of All I know, all I can touch and experience as life, or that which was once alive, is this planet. This Earth, and her wondrous biosphere.

I owe her everything. She gave me my breath. She gave me my energy. I cannot see Earth as anything but Mother, feminine and holy, sacred and patient. I cannot fathom a lifeless sphere, I cannot tolerate matter without nonmaterial substance. It makes no sense to me, to see a world with no soul, a planet with no heart.

I am a virus on her back, a solitary virus in a sea of human-plaque, our square-like brick ever breeding, always consuming. Consuming is all I do. I am not chloroplast-life, I am mitochondrial-life, and I eat and use and ingest that which is before me. Me, and my seven billion brothers and sisters.

I am a virus who woke up and realized I no longer want to be a virus. I no longer want to thrive on the back of my host, sucking life from her and the species which represent her whole. Don’t they have a voice, too? Don’t they have a say as to what us pink viral primates do with each and every breath that the forest, the green life, more or less, gave to us in billions of years of experience?

If it were me, and I was in the position of Gaia, I would kill us all. I would terminate all life, and let the biosphere begin anew, or close to new. But she won’t be doing the killing, our ever-patient Mother, no, we will be doing it. We will choke on our own filth. We will kill an atmosphere that took three billion years to form. For what, exactly, for money? For power? For the primate-driven need to be Alpha?

Where does patience come into our genes, where do we find a place in our human hearts to stop this maddening consumption and embrace symbiosis?

I don’t think it will ever happen. It isn’t because I am a pessimist. It isn’t because I am depressed. I am those things at times, but I am more often seeking the silver lining than many believe, because I am still alive. I haven’t done myself in, and I do think of it, with all the sorrow I know I create. My house is warmed by ancient sunlight, taken from the Dakotas, the raped hole filled with toxic waste, like semen left in a victim after rape. My isolated life in the mountains exists, all because of ancient sunlight, removed rather impatiently by my need for a warm belly, a warm plate, a warm bed.

All of this is my fault. Not mine alone, no, but for my part, I know. I know I have built structures out of trees that are older than I can comprehend in my pitiful +/-80 year lifespan. I know I fueled up my vehicle with gulf oil after the Deepwater Disaster. I know I eat the shrimp which should be feeding other mammals. I know, and I carry that knowing none too easily.

This knowing keeps me up at night. I can’t get to bed without distraction, and I am addicted to distraction because it keeps me from leaving sooner than my loved ones would like. I cannot do that to them, they love me so much. It would be unfair to my Mother, who links me to this cycle of giving and patience that I can barely comprehend.

So, when a tree falls in a forest, do you give a damn? I know you don’t, nor do I. You wipe your ass with redwood just like most of us. You pick the mucus out of your nose and smear it on a Kleenex, not caring if that Kleenex was once a tree a thousand years old. After all, trees have no feelings. Trees don’t weep when they are cut down. They don’t lash out and smite you as they are toppled by your machines. Hell, matter has no feeling, no conscience, according to the Darwin-world we have all adhered to. We live each day like this, believing a rock carries no worth, aside from it’s usable ore. It is the religion of our era, to see all matter as void of magic, unless of course, that matter is human.