RANT: FALLING LEAVES AND POEMS

After Carthage

Begin with the ashes.

Rasp the air with tools of grit and despair

until the soft walls of the world are clear once more.

Then attend here, where the rot of wood

is coloured with dry skins whose pigments flake

and scatter beneath your rough hands.

Leave nothing of them behind.

Scour the pillars and pediments,

the brave arches and domes,

all the struts and mainstays

of once-proud architecture,

long-grimed by the hot fires of sacrifice.

“From days of glory,” as some would say.

Cleanse it; clear it all away.

Clean the temples, the towers,

the inns and hostels.

Sweep the roads and main ways,

and the alleys where beggars gather

with their trays of trinkets,

ready to sell to the new buyers of the world.

Have once all gone.

Then pack up your bright tomorrows,

those careful gifts of tribute

for our new lords’ altars and plinths.

By far our most precious, 

and fragile, of cargoes.

 

 

WELL, THEY'VE FINALLY STARTED CONSTRUCTION NEXT DOOR—right next door. I’d hoped they would put it off until next year when I’d like to move out of my current digs. Gentrification is in the air, and thars money to be made in reeeel estate, Billy! Arr! Next door was a large, vacant lot with lots of scrub brush and bush, and apparently not worth much on its own. I’d never walked around there—the lot was a hangout for party-goers and drug deals, but the citified wildness was a pleasant landscape to look at, and I miss it. It reminded me of places I played in as a child.

Then they brought in a backhoe and weed whackers and stripped it down to the dirt. A few days later a pile driver arrived to break up the soil and everyone’s sanity. When that machine started its business, man, I bailed out of my bunker! My place jumped around like a politician at a fundraiser. I took several prints off the wall, so they wouldn't fall while dishes rattled on their shelves like we were in the middle of an earthquake or something. Scheesh! But so far the old place is still standing. They finished a few days ago and I'm watching for what comes next. Life is exciting, until it’s not.

Is It Time to Wake Up, Yet?

In these gloomy days of Covid-19, when large numbers of people are homeless, or jobless, my little excitement pales by comparison, so I'd like to turn to the cheerier topic of climate change and our inadequate response to it. A few days ago I read an article by American journalist Max Blumenthal that examined recent criticism of the documentary Planet of the Humans, a movie I've discussed in a previous post. Max provides an important exposè on green financing within the mainstream environmental movement. By "green finance" I mean, the funders of those large, well-known NGOs that have been at the forefront of environmental activism for decades. His article elaborates on where the money to run many of the NGOs is sourced, and the findings are disturbing. Organizations like Greenpeace, 350. Org., the Rocky Mountain Institute and others, as well as so-called "green" foundations and start-up funders, take significant amounts of money from companies and individuals associated with the fossil fuel industry or other large corporate sectors such as "Big Ag" or "Big Pharma". Furthermore, a disturbing number of green NGOs have as board members, partners, 'advisors', etc. people from those same industries that the NGOs hope to transform or eliminate. When billionaires and mega-rich companies donate time and money to green causes and promote green political agendas, it begs the question: "What do they want in exchange?" And for me the simplest answer probably works best: 

They want what those in power invariably want—to remain in power. They want business as usual, but with a green smile-face as their logo. They want their profits wrapped with a bow inside a pretty, green package. They are willing to change their designs, product lines, manufacturing processes and so on, as long as they are free to sail on the (green) currents of today’s environmentalism, and as long as their business model remains securely in place. Blumenthal references this in his discussion on the growth of the solar and wind generation sectors:   

 

"But was the presentation of renewable energy sources in “Planet of the Humans” actually false? Ecological economist William Rees has claimed that 'despite rapid growth in wind and solar generation, the green energy transition is not really happening.' That might be because it is chasing energy growth instead of curtailing it. [Italics mine] Rees pointed out that the surge in global demand for electricity last year 'exceeded the total output of the world’s entire 30-year accumulation of solar power installations.'

Are there not reasonable grounds then to be concerned about the practicality of a full transition to renewables, especially in a hyper-capitalist, growth-obsessed economy like that of the United States?" (“Green Billionaires”, The Grayzone, 09/07/20)

 

Max’s article exposes the financial web that weaves its way through much of the environmental advocacy sector, and how this money may be shaping and co-opting the ideals and actions of many green organizations. The “Green New Deal”* being touted in the United States and elsewhere as the way forward in our struggle to combat climate change, may be leading us down the proverbial garden path. There is a great deal of money to be made transforming our economies using clean energy and renewables, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars! But at the end of the day, having put all our eggs, so to speak, into the renewables’ basket (primarily wind and solar, and EV development) will we have altered the course climate change? Will levels of Co2 and other pollutants in the air decline significantly? And more to the point—will renewable energy prove to be the panacea as so many believe? Will it work?

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I don’t think it will, and for this reason: As long as our economies are based on the capitalist/growth model of unlimited growth on a finite planet (our world, our home; our only home)—then our future will be a one-way dead-end into history’s dumpster.

Max’s article examines the efficiency claims of renewable power generation and its ability to scale-up to grid-level production, and there are more than a few questions concerning whether such an endeavour is possible. More importantly, a paradigm shift is needed—a fundamental re-ordering of how we live on this little blue planet, and how we live with each other and the other organisms that inhabit it. Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore, in their ‘inconvenient’ Planet of the Humans documentary and articles such as Max Blumenthal’s “Green Billionaires” challenge the green vision of today’s environmentalism, and they provide a needed corrective to what, in my opinion, is often greenwash and misaligned priorities.

It’s like we’re on-board a speeding train, and all of us have a single purpose—to make our train the most efficient, speedy and sturdy in existence. We work day and night to refurbish, streamline, and power it as it roars faster and faster down the track. We finally achieve our goal of making our train the greatest in the world. Unfortunately, there is a sharp bend in the tracks somewhere ahead, below which is an all but bottomless gorge. And no matter how perfect we’ve made it, our train cannot straighten out the tracks that lay before it or build a bridge across the shadowy gorge. So, instead of wondering where all the answers are, perhaps we should begin with the questions. And Paul Gauguin’s famous 1897 painting comes to mind, with the enigmatic words he added to his canvas: “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” Let’s begin there before we continue along on our journey. 

 

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

*Interesting aside: I was looking up Green New Deal online and the top search item provided in the new “Ad” section at the top of Google’s search page results was for  the webpage “New Ideal” found at the website aynrand.org. Which is ironic on so many levels. It reminded me that search engines, like corporations, powerful elites, and subscribers to the (barely-not) fascistic philosophy of Ayn Rand, will play both sides of the aisle, so long as there’s a profit to be made. The article, here, is of course critical of renewables, and lauds “the ability to harness energy on an industrial scale [using fossil fuels]… as an unprecedented liberating force, freeing mankind from the unrelenting hardship of brute physical labor,” which is hard to disagree with, as long as you don’t ask too many questions, of course, and is right as (acid) rain if you’re a member of the Übermensch class.

 

 

 

   

RANT: FALL AND OLD BONES

 

 

A Demonstration of Echoes  

A demonstration of echoes

once flocked along these walls,

swirled among the chimneys

chattering in the halls.

They paraded on cobblestones—

such clopping ‘neath the hoof!

Rudely waking masters

while raising up the roof.

They would chorus through our churchyards,

bellowing at the bells,

japing sleepers’ matins

with cockcrow sunrise knells.

Around the town, their self-same song

gave airs to fleeting gifts:

bouncing balls and laughter

and what comes after it.

Among the houses row on row,

‘mid clamour of the days,

such came round to greet us

to task our better ways.

 

But when raucous, corbelled courtyards

‘last yield to time-pocked stone,

mansions torn of rafters

will shout their every groan.

 

And so with fall, when winds do raise

low moans before the moon;

under bridge and belfry,

they sound their time-worn tune.

 

The fall of rock, the cry of wind,

the tree's death in the wood;

calling nature’s echoes,

so late misunderstood.

 

 

Of course, it’s different when you’re old. Funny, I can’t even say “when you’re older”, anymore. Somehow, that rings hollow. It seems there’s a line you cross—it’s there at different times for different people. It’s the one that’s always imagined—until it’s not. It’s real, and enough like a knife edge to cut you as you cross it. It’s that sharp reminder, telling you how little time you have left and how precious each moment is—when each moment should contain everything! Yet so many simply pass by.

Hmmm, I guess I’ve been watching too many leaves fall these days! Well, autumn has begun in earnest and the trees are turning their age-old colours; it’ll be colder in a while and  time to get the long johns out of mothballs. I was hoping to do a book report on William Gibson’s 2014 Sci-Fi novel The Peripheral. The book jacket credits him with being, “one of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working” (Boston Globe), and I’ve read a number of his earlier “cyber-punk” novels that he’d written in the 1980s. But I have a confession to make: I just can’t read William Gibson, anymore! I read along for 50-60 pages and find myself losing the plot. (Is there one?!) His details drive me crazy! Gibson is a fantastic word sculptor, if I can use that term. He’s very environmental. By that I mean he depicts the physical setting—objects, structures, processes and so on using crisp, interesting, at times oddly juxtaposed, even oppositional, descriptors. For example:

 

“He was watching one of Lev’s two thylacine analogs through the kitchen window, as it did its stiff-tailed business beside an illuminated bed of hostas. He wondered what its droppings might be worth. There were competing schools of thylacinery, warring genomes, another of Lev’s hobbies. Now it turned, in its uncanine fashion, its vertically striped flank quite heraldic, and seemed to stare at him. The regard of a mammalian predator neither canid nor felid was a peculiar thing, Lev had said. Or perhaps Dominika had a feed from its eyes.” (39)

The cowboy's magic lasso got out of hand.

 

Here is his trademark envisioning of advanced technology as it intersects with the human world and our social orderings—powerful technologies of machine learning, robotics, IT, and genetics. I rushed to my dictionary to look up “thylacine” and learned it was a recently-extinct (1933) carnivorous marsupial from Tasmania (also known as the “Tasmanian Tiger.”) In this passage, we learn that Lev, a rich Russian socialite, has two genetically-reconstituted thylacines as pets and guard dogs or, more accurately, 'guard marsupials'. In addition, they have been genetically engineered and may even have miniature cameras implanted in their eyes. Gibson presents us with settings, actions and characters that are often cryptic and opaque. We learn this is a future time, several decades from now, when a new technology called “quantum tunnelling” has been developed which allows communication with the past. However, the earliest they can go back is around 2020. Just why they can communicate no earlier than this date is a bit of a mystery.

Thyacine: "Tasmanian Tiger" (c. 1933)

Gibson develops two parallel time settings with two sets of characters, and his plot centres around what happens when they intersect. He has an interesting twist on the ‘time travel’ motif wherein each communication with the past creates a distinct time-line, so that their own (future) time is not altered by any changes they might make in the past. (Question: If you can alter the past without changing the present does that make you a god?) 

Gibson describes the growing disparities between rich and poor, how in our time technologies that will become powerful and ubiquitous (particularly for elites) in the future are just now in their infancy. We compare and contrast, and judge as well, the two sets of characters and their worlds, each from a different time period, yet connected by a “Gordian knot” of interwoven technology that may yet prove harmful to them all. Interesting premise, but my main bugaboo with Gibson is that his characters are the same as all the other characters from his past novels—the lone computer hacker, tech-savvy wiz-kids, indolent rich, and so on. And his often bleak vision of human society composed of atomized and estranged individuals who struggle to survive in an increasingly hostile web of technology and manipulations by powerful elites is something I find off-putting. The people in his novels are most human and relatable when they disengage, or are freed, from their technological bindings.

His novels are dark, with little humour and lots of irony; still, he paints his literary canvas with crisp, enigmatic images, evocative settings and puzzling problems.

But, I have difficulty reading Gibson for another reason—I just don’t believe in his future. When we think of the wide range of today’s technologies, from GMO/mono-crop agriculture (I’ve been thinking about that lately) to drones, nuclear weapons, advanced AI and so on, we seem to be caught in a “monkey trap” and can’t let go. The technological fix we’re in, a product of our big brains at the expense of the rest of us, is what he’s writing about, of course, except the quandaries he imagines are fictional, while ours are very real. Where I go down a different path than Gibson is that I see our current suite of technologies (or most of them at least) as having relatively short shelf-lives. Yes, it’s true that future generations will have to contend with, for example, the by-products of our so-called “Green Revolution” in agriculture and its ultimately destructive and short-sighted land-stewardship practices. And there’s a whole list of technologies and their unintended consequences I won’t bother listing now; you know the drill. I just don’t think such technologies--many of them key in keeping our civilization running--will remain viable in the future, and we will either choose new ways of doing things or be forced to accept them, going forward. Gibson’s vision of a dystopian technological future just doesn’t resonate with me.

So I put down The Peripheral and picked up Salman Rushdie’s fantasy novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. It is a delightful story about Dunia, a “jinnia” princess who falls in love with the twelfth century philosopher and translator of Aristotle, Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Dunia is a fantastical creature, a “jinni” or as we would say “genie”, those beings from Arabian folklore who inhabit lamps and grant wishes. Rushdie describes how, from time to time, the worlds of the jinni and human intersect. (This involves rips in the space-time continuum and wormholes!) It is a story that also involves two different time periods, one describing Dunia’s life with Ibd Rushd in the twelfth century, and her new love, the gardener Raphael Hieronymus Manezes, in the twenty-first. Raphael is actually her great, great (and a bunch more greats) grandson, and a descendant of Ibd Rushd. He is of a special breed of humans who have latent magical powers inherited from Dunia. I’m reminded of how this contrasts with Gibson’s technologically-enhanced humans who have computerized devices embedded in their bodies or else they control advanced computerized machinery. It’s the human quality, the attention Rushdie pays to how his characters interact, how they feel, what they believe in and think, how they love and grow, all within a fantasy story framework, that make the book appealing. The story is framed as a legend passed down generation after generation to some future story-teller (and our story's narrator) hundreds of years from our own time—one thousand and one years in the future, to be precise (not one thousand years, as even numbers are considered inauspicious in Arabic numerology.) Of course, Rushdie’s title references the famous One Thousand and One Nights* tale of Scheherazade from Arabic literature, with that number used as a recurring motif in the novel. I’m currently at the point where the boundary between the jinni’s world and the human is breaking down and the two are colliding with increasing chaos in both. The outcome of this potentially catastrophic meeting, we’re told by our future historian, is what has shaped that future time. I can hardly wait to find out what happens!

I guess I should say something about the poem. I was thinking about what we've seen over the last few years of all those bombed-out cities in the Middle East. Aleppo, an ancient city, one with a population in 2010 of some four million is one particularly hard hit. During the recent Syrian civil war, great swaths of it were destroyed in an effort to fight ISIS. And I was thinking about the sounds around us and how sound echoes, is carried by the wind and so on, and how these returning sounds inform us about where we are and who we are. It's our paltry version of bats' echo-location ability. A city wracked by war sounds different than a peaceful one, even long after the guns and bombs have stopped. And all the sounds of life, including their reverberations in the world and in the man-made world, remind us how those sounds change over time; they change in good times and in bad, and we often forget to listen to them, even forget they'd ever existed. We forget them even as they make their presence known to us time after time. We need to listen more, especially to sounds the world chooses to return to us. 

 Cheers, Jake. 

 

 

 

   *Which is 2 years, 8 months and 28 days.

Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Alfred A. Knoff, Canada, 2015. 

William Gibson, The Peripheral, 2014. G. P, Putnam's Sons, New York, N.Y.