nightdream

politics & poetry

you can call me ma'am and you can call me a mammal but don't you call me an environmentalist as if i am one thing and “the environment” is another

call me a mother a daughter a sister a colleague a neighbor a friend

call me a californian an american a global citizen an earthling

call me a soil tender a seed sower a tree hugger

but don't call me an environmentalist

as if monarchs are one thing and milkweed is another as if koalas are one thing and eucalyptus is another as if polar bears are one thing and sea ice is another

don't call me an environmentalist

as if air is one thing and lungs are another as if rain is one thing and roots are another as if i am one thing and you are another

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Watch the clouds swell, cows drift across the yellow hillside

Watch the inky hawks circle and circle over blades of grass waving in the field

Watch the squirrel flick its tail, clasping tiny fingers around a newfound acorn

Watch the flies zig and zag like magical green jewels

Watch the line of ants stream upward from a tiny crack in the pavement

Watch the shadow of a live oak stretch over grass as the sun dips lower

Watch your reflection, so still in a small puddle on the gravel path (the remainder of an earlier rain)

Watch the glinty sky-mark of a passenger jet traverse the great dome of sky

Steal this hour

Then watch and watch and watch

Nothing to do but watch

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A sneakered foot in a gravel parking lot with purple flowers on one side and a car tire on the other

Consider less discourse, more sensing. Watch, listen, taste, touch, smell. Senses are the contact points between person and world. Relating is a physical act.

Three points of reflection for living in connection:

ONE: Eihei Dogen in Zenki (“The Whole Works”)

Riding in the boat, one even causes the boat to be a boat. One should meditate on this precise point. 

TWO: Martin Shaw in Courting the Wild Twin

I recently saw a mist suddenly descend on my garden. It just rolled in out of nowhere. Everything changed, just like that. Very quickly, all appeared different. No shrubs, no apple trees, it was a foreign landscape. The dead felt usefully close, the silence deeper. In just a moment, the Underworld seemed present, as an atmosphere rather than a concept, a tangible, seasonal shift not a distant idea.

This world can be Otherworld, Underworld, heavenly, hellish and all points in between. It can still be Arcadia, Camelot, Eden almost. That’s why it’s confusing. We still get to go on holiday, drink wine, watch beautiful sunsets. We still pay insurance and kids still go to college. But there is something happening. An unravelling. A collapsing, both tacit and immense in scale.

We are frightened and do not know what will happen next.

And into that fraught zone drifts quite naturally the Underworld. This is not the dayworld, this is the night-world we are entering. The nightworld is not processional, tidy steps, and objective outcomes, but potent with insight, uncertainty and the need for dream-skill. The skill is witnessing the depth intelligence that dreams offer, the great plunge into soul’s magical disorientations. That’s how the earth tends to talk to us, rather than our strip-lit, strip-mined Morse code it has almost been plunged into silence with. It’s not the senate that talks with the earth, it’s the shaman.

But we are still using dayworld words. This is why so little works.

THREE: Joseph Chaiken in The Presence of the Actor

An actor should strive to be alive to all that he can imagine to be possible. Such an actor is generated by an impulse toward an inner unity, as well as by the most intimate contacts he makes outside himself. When we as actors are performing, we as persons are also present and the performance is a testimony of ourselves. Each role, each work, each performance changes us as persons. The actor doesn't start out with answers about living – but with wordless questions about experience. Later, as the actor advances in the process of work, the person is transformed. Through the working process, which he himself guides, the actor recreates himself.

Nothing less.

By this I don't mean that there is no difference between a stage performance and living. I mean that they are absolutely joined. The actor draws from the same source as the person who is the actor.

In former times acting simply meant putting on a disguise. When you took off the disguise, there was the old face under it. Now it’s clear that the wearing of the disguise changes the person. As he takes the disguise off, his face is changed from having worn it. The stage performance informs the life performance and is informed by it.

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I follow a half a dozen or so podcasts somewhat regularly, and one that I listen to most frequently is Crazy Town from Post Carbon Institute. The April 17 episode, Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History, dipped a toe into the problem of plastics, and I want to dip my own toe just a tiny bit deeper.

The hosts touched on the origins of synthetic plastics, which spanned four decades or so, from the 1853, when Alexander Parkes patented the first human-made cellulose-based plastic (Parkesine), to 1907 when Leo Hendrik Baekeland created the first fully synthetic, fossil-fuel based plastic (Bakelite). Synthetic plastics were developed to solve the problem of overconsumption of natural resources. The popularity of billiards, which relied on balls made of ivory, was thought to be driving elephants toward extinction. The manufacture of hair combs was similarly endangering tortoises. With synthetic plastics, there was enough to go around for everyone. Consumption was democratized. Everyone could have hair combs, cigarette lighters, and sunglasses.

100+ years later, we see where plastics have gotten us. The ocean has become a colossal plastic dump. Plastic particles can now be found in human tissues and blood, human placentas, the animals and plants we eat, and the most remote environments on Earth. Hormone-like substances in plastics disrupt the endocrine systems of humans and animals, lowering fertility. Plastic kills and maims wildlife, ensnaring animals or clogging the digestive system of animals that mistake it for food. And it seems unlikely that humans will find a way to extricate ourselves from our plastic predicament anytime soon.

Everything about the way we live here in the U.S. depends on the abundance and convenience of plastic. Food to go. Fast fashion. Moving away from plastic reliance means living differently, more simply, with less. Even if everyone were ready to jump on board, lower consumption, be good planetary co-inhabitants to one another – a laughably implausible notion at best – even then, if we dramatically reduce our use of plastic, is there enough to go around? What will we make hair combs from? Toothbrushes? Clothing? Can we feed and raise enough sheep for wool and plant and harvest enough natural fibers like cotton, flax, and hemp, to clothe the masses? Will re-wear, modify, and hand down clothing through an extended life-cycle? Our arable land needs to grow us food and clothing, not consumer goods. If human consumption in the 19th century was driving wildlife to extinction, how will a world population increased nearly seven-fold since then – with an enlarged appetite for stuff – make do with much, much less plastic? It's going to require a massive change, and we're not going to float to our new future on the techno-optimists' pipe dream.

I write short posts because I like reading short posts. I'll be writing more about plastic, ecocide, the climate crisis, and living into The Great Unraveling. We're just getting started.

Related: Crazy Town Podcast The Limits to Growth Autofac by Philip K. Dick

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What Is Antisemitism?

  • The Ancient Roots of Anti-Judaism | Facing History | 2016 Video with transcript

    Scholars trace anti-Jewish myths, hatred, and violence back to the time of the Roman Empire in this historical overview of anti-Judaism’s roots.

  • Antisemitism on the rise: A research roundup | by Jordan Fenster for The Journalist's Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center | 2022 Text. Explains the differences between racial, religious, social, economic, political and positive antisemitism.

    For Nazis, the goal of racial antisemitism was the extermination of the Jews as a people. “If it’s religious antisemitism, then your goal is conversion,” he said. “If it’s political antisemitism, your goal can be the diminishment of Jewish political power, or the expulsion of Jews from the political entity.” The goal of economic antisemitism is to limit Jewish economic participation, which Berenbaum says used to be demonstrated by edicts forcing Jews to work in specific industries, or by glass pay ceilings. More recently, it’s “the association of Jews with money.”

  • Exploring hate: How antisemitism fuels white nationalism | PBS News Weekend | 2021 Video with transcript Excerpt (6 min) Full video (1 hr 21 min)

    [Eric Ward:] The first thing we have to understand is white nationalist or other politically violent movements are racially biased movements. They don't bring anti-Semitism or other forms of bigotry to our community. They merely organize the bigotry that already exists. Anti-Semitism exists in American society. White nationalists are tapping into it in order to build political power. It means we have to understand anti-Semitism, and one of the things we should understand about anti-Semitism is it doesn't just impact Jews. Non-Jews are just as vulnerable to the violence of anti-Semitism as the Jewish community.

  • What is Antisemitism? | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Text with video

    Antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people. It is a form of bigotry and racism. For centuries, antisemites have demonized and dehumanized Jews by spreading antisemitic tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracy theories.

Articles

Books

I'm only listing books I've read and would recommend. This list will expand.

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