We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn't terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn't very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling on London and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
--John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, 1941
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| One, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 10 1/2", Steve Brown 2022 |
Friday, May 3, 2022
As the evening sun angles down on Monterey Bay, shafts of warm sunlight filter down through the cold waters to a rocky slope at a depth of a little over thirty feet below the surface. Clumps of sea urchins forest the rockslide, their animal arms waving around like the fronds of squat palms on some exotic volcanic plug shooting straight out of the ocean in the middle of nowhere. A rusted can sits, nestled at an angle between two stones, like a hermits cabin, a rust hole forming a door. Little bubbles float by. And then the scene is suddenly blotted out by a golden fish-eye, jeweled and ignited. Specks of gold encircle the large black hole of the yellow-eyed rockfish, a portal to a vision and a mind, which, at least in this life, we will never remotely know--a soul looking out on a world of barnacles and urchins and kelp and old rusted pipes and discarded barrels and cans that have ragged holes and doors and entryways to camps and homes and hangouts, that while accessible to any scuba diver, remain galaxies away as far as perception, intent, and being are concerned. Yet, the world perceived from the other side of that golden eye and our world are not disconnected.
As I shower, a hot force of water massages the muscle molecules in my back, which I know no more about than the mind of that fish. The water feels O so good, and I think about these things: I wonder why I was lucky enough to wake up with that image of that golden fish-eye. It may just be the perfect way to precede with my book. That has been happening a lot lately. For the first time in my life, I feel fully open to a full range of possibilities. There is growing evidence that the world we see is only limited by what we are open to perceive. Whatever lenses we cling to define our reality. View light as a particle, and it is so. View light as wave, and it is so--even through the objective lens of science. Not that all visions are real. Believing something does not make it so. Not believing, however, does void it as a possible glimpse into an unknown universe. You cannot see light you are unwilling to let in. I'm done narrowing my world to what I see through pinholes. It's time to float around, almost weightless, and explore this great big complex existence called life fully.
As I exit the bathroom, Marci is listening to a piece on NPR about the giant black hole they have just verified exists at the center of our galaxy--another fisheye wormhole to an existence, which, at least in this life, we will never fully understand. Yet, I have absolutely no doubt that existence does continue to exist even amid gravity and pressure so strong and dense even light itself collapses and goes who knows where. And if that full, dense void was not at the center of our galaxy, would we remain here in our orbit around our little sun on our little tip of just one arm of this gigantic sea creature we call the Milky Way, or would we go spinning off into a bleak, black distance too vast to comprehend?
It is a bright day, after a good overnight rain, and a frosting of slushy white snow in the morning. The air is crisp and clean. The morning sunlight is golden on the fresh budding trees.
This big valley, which has been part of my life for so long, is beautiful today. The Cricket Mountains are sharp and defined, as is the House Range. I can even see that Haystack Peak, about 100 miles away, has received fresh snow. This is the valley of my mind, the one I remember from my childhood. It seldom exists anymore. Distance is not what it once was--clear and untarnished.
It is only May, and already we've had five or six dust storms, including yesterday. That is new, but the smoky summer skies have been intensifying since at least 2005. My little tidepool here is changing. I'm not sure whether this is a book about trying to stop that change, or adapt to it, or both.
Steinbeck learned early-on that you need to be able to sum-up the main idea of your book in one sentence. If you can do that, and then let it go, and just write, it will hang together. If you can't, it won't.
Here's what I think: I believe we are headed into very difficult times. We have known about climate change for a very long time, and we have not made the necessary course corrections. I don't blame anyone. If I did, I would have to blame myself. My desk at work is littered with empty plastic water bottles, as is my car. I do take a refillable cup to work, and usually use that, but if I forget a day, as I frequently do, I run to the fridge and grab a water bottle. Same goes when I'm in the car. I try to remember to take water with me on my drive, but if I don't, I don't hesitate to stop and pay an unrighteous price for water in a container that comes with a price tag so high it cannot be measured in dollars and cents, although it is definitely impacting that as well. Dollars only represent the ability to obtain food, and food only represents the capacity of earth to sustain us--inflation and scarcity are not unrelated.
So, up until at least last week, I was only willing to make incremental changes in my lifestyle, that although they make me feel good, will not solve the problems we face. Societies around the world are doing the same. This most likely is going to be one hell of a summer--literally. When Marci and I were in California in April, the snowpack on the southern Sierras looked like it usually does in August. The drought the west is experiencing currently is the worse drought in 12,000 years. What needed to be done, needed to be done decades ago. I will not be able to write this book quickly enough to document all that is going to come. I will get most things wrong. Events will be different and probably more intense than I imagined. But the causes will remain the same. Those are worth talking about even if I get some of the effects wrong.
So, what I think this book is really about is a way to not only survive through it all, but to thrive through it all--spiritually, mentally, socially, and physically. It's about a paradigm shift that John Steinbeck and Ed Rickets, despite their many human flaws, understood needed to happen long ago. The time has come to revisit their message to the world. We are not only on the brink of another dust bowl--only this one, I believe, will be greater--but we are also possibly on the brink of another world war. Now is the time to put away our bad habits and our little-bitty feel-good changes that have no real impact on our world and face the fact we are on the brink of climatic and social collapse around the world. Yet, as I have recently come to realize facing kidney disease, accepting reality can and should be a time of healing, humility and joy, not doom and gloom.
If gratitude and joy are not apparent in every sentence I write here, I will have failed. These are working days. It's time to put my shoulder to the wheel and push along.
Here's my sentence: We are all connected, and what we choose to do now will impact our individual and shared realities through the eternities.
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