Once so big
I’m looking at the massive destruction of the Indonesian rainforest. I see the fires storming through, the palls of smoke. I see the smoking stumps left behind and the scorched soil.
What I don’t see are the fried creatures who couldn’t escape, the terrified animals who were traumatized, the homeless creatures driven out from their homes, the desperate search for a home in the reduced habitat by the fleeing survivors.
I couldn’t see the carbon dioxide released into the air or the oxygen that will never be produced.
Outside I hear a group of drunks singing raucously as they stagger obliviously home without a care. Their lives are lived in a plastic and concrete universe and they really do not care. They do not see what is happening and they are not interested.
They will no doubt get on a plane to travel to the other side of the world for a stag night. They will walk along tarmac from bar to bar and never see a living thing. To them this will not matter at all.
They disparagingly call people like me ‘tree-huggers’.
I borrow a word from John Cooper Clarke to describe them – TWATS!!
Once so Big
Once so big, now so small.
Once so empty, now so full.
Green and noisy
Chattering with calls
Chirping and buzzing
Now motorways and walls.
Voices laughing
Staggering along
In the silent night
Just a raucous song.
Once so lively, now so still.
Once so healthy, now so ill.
Brown and smoky
Scoured and clean
Sterilised and barren
From what might have been.
Opher 7.11.2015
Sitting on the bare earth at those big 1970 festivals, we couldn’t have imagined how pear-shaped everything would go … could we?
No. I was overcome with the whiff of optimism. I really thought we were building something better; that the new sensibilities would create something much better.
So sad. So incredibly wrong.
Unfortunately it is happening all over the world. This is the age of wanton destruction, short sightedness, the quick buck and uncaring cruelty.
All we can do is protest as loudly as we can.
Y ou are very good at protest through your writing. You explain it how it is. It’s good. I just have to be careful about how much I let in. I won’t buy anything else with palm oil in it. That’s for sure.
Thanks for your kind words. You give me strength! We will win. The future deserves it. Nature deserves it! We can’t let all those billions of creatures down.
We need to decide what we really need – eg. community, security, beauty, sustainability and variety – and then set about creating it. If there’s one thing growing up in the 60s gave us, it’s creativity. The vision must be first explored by the artists …
Dave – you are truly a man of the sixties – empowered and optimistic. I love it. You provide inspiration.
You too, Opher … only just got started on this cyberspace exploration … feel there’s good potential for something new, even after all this time. Bit like emerging from a cocoon, who knows how high we can fly
Dave – at least we have a voice and the passion to say things from the heart – the optimism to want a better world and the desire to make it happen – Keep on truckin’ buddy!!
It’s just that it is so unending – the causes. I do a lot. Then I shut down, then do more. I try to focus on Love, because I find it very powerful to change minds. I get so down when I am bombarded with all bad things that I read. I think I get mail outs and emails from every environmental agency in existence. Lots of petitions to sign. Don’t know if they help at all. I do write some personal letters to senators, etc – but it will take some sort of global revolution. The only way to get through it all is to trust that there is something that I can’t even imagine – like a global consciousness awakening and it better happen today.
I know exactly what you mean. I get completely swamped with despair. The attacks on nature are everywhere and they are overwhelming. I hate the minbdless, callous cruelty and thoughtless stupidity. We’re selling the future for a lump of today. But there are lots of us out there who care. We need to sign and shout and boycott and kick up a fuss. That’s what I try to do!