Meanderings One.

The promise of warmth drove me toward Los Angeles. I had never been there, and the hatred bred within my Colorado heart to abhor that city needed to be confirmed, or denied. Looking out across that wind-swept desert, stretching out between Grand Junction and the Sierras, filled me with excitement.

What drivel.

The cars made their goings down the highway I lived off of. The slamming of car doors, opening and closing, kept me awake in my drowsy sleep of imperfection - too hot, too cold, somewhere in the middle, but anxious. 

The cars are our protective bubbles. They replaced the horse, whose majesty evolved alongside our own. But now, we had evolved our own mechanical slaves that run on ancient sunlight and come with climate control.  Driving through the Reservation, looking into the expanse of a black and cloudy night, and so little infrastructure, wondering what the car has brought the American Indian - is it the same power as the horse?

I wondered if the Indian selling shoddy jewelry at the gas station was truly in need of a tank of gas. After we drove off into that dry and frigid night, my fingers cracking from the lack of moisture, shame overwhelmed me. I should have given something. But, lacking job and taking this trip on credit and with the hope my new degree would bring a career, we were, ourselves, in the beans-and-rice times.  Yet, here I sat, comfortable in my car-bubble, free from fear of the frigid cold, and that Indian was peddling jewelry for gas. 

I hate myself. 

I hate my culture. My race.

My Programming.

I can’t get his face out of my mind, my fear of him, my shame of where he is, of where I am, because of all those before me have taken. Have, ‘won.’

I could have helped. I should have helped. But years seeing those around me fall to addictions have programmed me to believe most asking for money are asking for fuel, not to feed their protective bubble cars, but to feed their damage with substances that make them forget. I cannot give through channels of peddling and cardboard signs, with that money possibly feeding someone’s need of bottle or powder.

How Imperial.

We drove on, after I tainted their water with my Imperial urine, to defeat the storm that came upon him that night. And I couldn’t spare a tank of gas.

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.