Nothing happens without a fight. Nothing continues without a truce

from smelling the snow (3)

It was a huge expansion in her being to understand that everything was connected. Enormous. But then, the never ending interconnectedness, the troubles of it all, the thin and fragile delicacies that bridged each eco-system created a sense of concern within her that was difficult to bear.  The real world, pushed back into the subliminal mindset holds all of life.  You do not turn your back on that but that is the thing you cannot gaze at directly.

~

     She settled with ‘enough for now’.  Enough to know that everything is connected.  Everything had to be lived with as if each part were essential. The birds, the animals, the land, the water.  Landscapes come naturally with complex relationships.  Like everyone else around her, she didn’t see it that way for a long time. She hoped that the places she had dreamed of traveling to were still intact, though she feared they were terribly diminished in size and capacity. She recognized vulnerabilities as everyone did who understood what ecology really meant. It meant we weren’t living on top of the world but in it.  We weren’t on a carpet; we were on a planet.  The nets, neural and interconnecting life nets were holding us in place and it was place that mattered. Place was the nexus. We were a part of that but we didn’t understand true community or incorporate the nature we were a part of it into our idea of neighborhoods.

~

     Here’s how you know we didn’t include nature in our world. We have no language for it.  Nature or the natural world is outside of us.  Ecology was a study of eco-systems. But our lives and livelihood were on top of those things, like a cup on a coaster.

~

     Mrs. Scattergood wanted her dream locations safe and rivers running free even though she wasn’t sure if she’d really know what that meant. She even saw places in her imagination unpeopled.  There are enough people, she thought, in her life and memory, she could leave some out of this fantasy.  She loved the wild but her understanding of it wasn’t any more successful at incorporating the world of people with the world of the nature.

~

     Fantasy was her only contact with the wild. “When it disappears, I will also.”  But she couldn’t explain that. What did Lady Day sing, “Don’t explain.”  You really can’t explain everything.  Can’t explain lapses in judgement.  Times you remember that make you cringe now. Times you leaned too heavy on a friend and forgot to share the good stuff too.  You can’t explain how helpless you feel in the presence of the past.  ‘But you know’, she argued with herself, ‘nothing happens without a fight.’ Nothing continues without a truce. 

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf