Saturday, November 21, 2015

SAVING THE EARTH

willem dekooning
 
Every day I am appealed to by facebook posts and documentary films, movies, to do something about the destruction of the North American continent, the oceans, the entire planet. I can't send money to all the organizations appealing for money to protest this and that. I can't help it that everything is about money. I can't help just about everything. I try to live in a way that I can help in my own world. I've taken on the responsibility of giving a cat a good life. Two donkeys with a third due any day I give a place to live their lives and feed them, keep them healthy, give them a home. I've been buying bulk bags of dog biscuits to throw on the ground outside the windows, a way to see the possums and raccoons at night, give them a treat for dropping by. The coons have destroyed the birdfeeders, not with intent, but their weight, so I throw birdseed on the ground. Birds like it on the ground, squirrels and chipmunks do too. Chipmunks take it home in their cheeks and store it for winter. I want my friends to have a good winter supply.
 
willem dekooning
 
I'm teaching myself to live in the landscape as it is. The seeds I throw on the ground are for anybody passing through. Chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, woodpeckers, cardinals have plenty of room so several can feed at once. Possums and coons pick up leftover seeds in the night. The birds entertain me, seeing them hop and peck. I've been told sunflower seeds grease their joints and give a gloss to their feathers. The birds, squirrels and chipmunks all live close around the house. They are my nearest neighbors. I could call it a homeless kitchen I'm providing, but they all have homes. This is their home. I feel like they are my friends like Sophia, Jack and Jenny are my friends. First thing in the morning, I take carrots to Jenny and Jack, then their hay. Chickadees, snowbirds and titmice chirp from the trees overhead reminding me they are next.
 
willem dekooning
 
Allowing the landscape to be as it is includes the landscape of the news of the day, the week, the year. That world is of no consequence to me except that the Bank has rendered the working class the poverty class. In the world of the people I live among, I've seen them work harder and get poorer as decades go by. The culture is going away, leaving them with television culture, which they seem to prefer to their own culture. I have a strong feeling that television's role is to shut down all the cultures that came out of the past, all over the earth. It seems like television is an interim culture between the many cultures and traditions of the past and the cultures yet to be, having little to no connection to the world in the time before electricity. When it comes to the end of the world as we know it, I see it ending every day, have seen it ending all my life. It is a long, slow process. It has been going on at least a century and may last a century more.
 
willem dekooning
 
We're in transition between one Age and another. Now the surface of the planet is breaking down from abuse. Fish are raked out of the ocean at a rate of billions a day. Balance in the ocean has been disrupted as much as balance on land is disrupted after not quite two centuries since the discovery of electricity and oil. Add the natural tendency to excess and things go out of balance. People on a cruise ship see a whale and everybody runs to that side of the ship to see the whale. The ship is way out of balance. The population situation is out of balance. Our economic system is out of balance. Kansas is now having earthquakes. Oklahoma is recently overrun with earthquakes. A giant crack opened in the ground in northern Wyoming. Yellowstone is an any-day-now volcano that will be at least the equal of Krakatoa when it blows. And I can't help it. All that geological action is completely out of my control, as is the over-fishing of the oceans. All I can do is live in the landscape as it is. The earth I live on is breaking down from excessive abuse, from indifference to life forms, from indifference to balance. I do my part for balance with the eight acres of earth's surface I have dominion over.  I embrace the life forms in my dominion and feed them. I believe this is doing my part better than sending money to Greenpeace or World Wildlife Fund.    
 
willem dekooning himself
 
 
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