Running Home, Running Away, Running Together

One reason I have such a hard time writing consistently on environmental problems is that it is so bloody depressing. Sometimes I want to throw up my hands in despair and run away screaming. Of course, part of the problem is that there is nowhere to run, and in fact part of how we got where we are was by assuming that we could “externalize” costs and let other people “over there” pay for our wastefulness “here.” And often “over there” is the developing third world and here is the developed first world. Gotta love globalization!

But I was watching the first episode of the TV series Xena, Warrior Princess the other day and it offers some insight about when we can and can’t—and maybe even should and shouldn’t—run away.

The episode opens with Xena (Lucy Lawless) riding through a burned-out village, remembering its destruction. A boy asks her for food. She tells him no one has anything to spare, and asks what happened to his village. He says that Xena the Warrior Princess came down out of the sky on a flaming chariot and destroyed it, killing everyone, including his parents. She drops a package on the ground and rides away. He opens it to see bread and cheese. In the next scene she strips off her leather armor and buries it and her weapons.

But almost immediately a ruckus ensues. A warlord and his minions are gathering villagers to sell as slaves. Dressed only in a linen shift and boots, Xena fights them off, first with her bare hands, then with a sword she takes from a minion, and finally with her weapons that she digs out of the ground. She returns with the people to their village and puts her armor back on while a young villager named Gabrielle (Renee O’Connor) begs her to tell her how she did her fighting moves and Gabrielle’s father insists that Xena move on and not get their village in bigger trouble.

The episode is titled “Sins of the Past” and it is clear that Xena cannot escape hers.

As she prepares to leave, Gabrielle begs to come too, saying, “You’ve got to take me with you and teach me everything you know. You can’t leave me here…. Xena, I’m not cut out for this village life. I was born to do so much more.” Xena refuses and leaves alone, so Gabrielle packs her things and runs away to follow Xena. She uses her wit to elude a Cyclops and get a ride on the cart of a farmer so she doesn’t have to walk all the way to Amphipolis, Xena’s home town.

Back home, Xena faces the people who knew her back in her village-burning days and want nothing to do with her—even her mother. Xena’s former warlord partner, Draco, and his army have started a campaign of burning and pillaging in Xena’s name, so when Xena warns the villagers that slavers are coming and tells them to defend themselves, but they accuse her of building an army that will get their loved ones killed, as she did in the past.

The people of Amphipolis surround Xena, who puts down her sword and offers herself as “one unarmed woman” that they can feel brave enough to attack. But just as they are about to attack, Gabrielle appears and testifies to Xena’s reformed ways, causing the citizens to let her go, just in time for her to save them from the slavers.  

After winning the fight against Draco, Xena declines the reward of the villagers and moves on, but again Gabrielle follows her. She convinces Xena to take her along, saying, “I’m not the little girl that my parents wanted me to be. You wouldn’t understand.”

Xena replies, “It’s not easy proving you're a different person.”

And here we see their similarities and differences. Both perceive themselves to be something their families can’t comprehend or accept. Xena, because of her conversion away from her days as a warlord, is seeking redemption through helping the helpless. Gabrielle, who feels like more than a village girl destined for an arranged marriage, is inspired by seeing Xena who is larger than life. Neither woman can be who she perceives herself to be, not within the social constructs that surround her.

But together? That might be a different matter.

As they move off the next morning, Xena says, “You know, where I’m headed, there’ll be trouble.” Gabrielle responds, “I know.” Xena says, “Then why would you want to go into that with me?”

And Gabrielle give us the answer. “That’s what friends do. They stand by each other when there’s trouble.”

And so they give us the answer to my dilemma too. We can’t do it alone, any of it. It’s too troublesome, dangerous, or, at the very least, depressing. But with a few friends? A small cohort of folks who know what we are deeply concerned about and agree? Maybe we can stand by each other.

Just maybe.

Deep in Slushy Midwinter

Yes, folks, here in Boston it is officially winter because we had a day where the sky was slushing down upon us and making it hard to get anywhere, or at least not dry and/or warm or, for example, with a whole lot of traction. And because I can make a metaphor out of bloody ANYTHING, I shall make an environmental blog out of this day's weather, as the Bible might suggest, redeeming the day.

And when that sort of day is ALSO a Monday, it needs more redeeming than most days need. So here I go.

What do I think of when I think about sliding toward work on a grey Monday morning, hoping not to fall in the puddles and cursing the folks who figured it was going to melt anyway, so why bother shoveling? Hope and curses, curses and hope.

A curse is an act of anti-hope, not despair so much as a negative, destructive hope. Go to hell, we say (or think), and imply that we hope the road there will be paved with something even more slippery than good intentions, thus speeding our interlocuters on their way... And remember, for Dante, the heart of hell was in fact frozen, and that was a man who knew how to curse his enemies. People always think that Dante was focused on spiritual realities, but if that was true, then why focus a full two-thirds of his magnum opus on places that weren't Heaven?

I'll tell you why. Because writers LOVE conflict. Without conflict, you've got no story. At best you might have a tableau, a still life, but then we remember that when life is still it has generally ceased to be life. So maybe the hair-splitting and back-pedaling of those whose agendas are environmentally neutral AT BEST, and at worst environmentally destructive--well, that's conflict, right? So the story is still being told?

Maybe. But I think that is why I am so drawn to a metaphor of battle. Because it does us no good to have a battle if only the bad guys show up. So I will spend the next several blog posts focusing on how to get the good guys to show up to the battle, strong, strategic and striving to win.

And with really good boots for traction in all weathers.

Talking the Walk

So here’s the thing. I just purchased Forrest E. Morgan’s book, Living the Martial Way, published in 1992. I have been a martial artist for more than half my life, sometimes earnest, sometimes sporadic, but always with at least one foot on the path. At the very end of his introduction, Morgan says:

“To avoid awkward ‘he and she’ sentence structures, I tend to refer to warriors in the masculine gender. I don’t mean this to imply that women can’t be warriors. Some of the greatest warriors in history were women, and there are great ones with us today. Indeed, warriorship knows no boundaries of sex race or culture” (Morgan 13).

What is implied is: “…but I’m too lazy to give them their due, so I am going to keep on perpetuating the myth of the masculine as the default human.”

So here is what I propose to do at least from time to time in this blog:

To avoid awkward “he and she” sentence structures, I will refer to warriors in the feminine gender. I don’t mean this to imply that men can’t be warriors. Some of the greatest warriors in history were men, and there are great ones with us today. But I think that if we are going to change our ideas, we have to start by changing our language. So where Major Morgan says, “The master warrior is a man of character, a man of wisdom and insight,” even though it would be just as easy to say “person” instead of “man” without any “awkward sentence structures,” I will say things like “The master warrior is a woman of character, a woman of wisdom and insight,” because we need to start thinking this way.

Eco-Warriors of the Apocalypse(s)

As I reread these few blog posts of the last two years, I begin to notice a trend. The vastness and seriousness of the environmental and corporate problems have been making me feel tremendously disempowered. And as I have mentioned before, that pisses me off. So, in the interest of my personal equanimity and empowerment, I have decided to start thinking about these things differently.

I have decided to write as an Eco-Warrior. This will mean drawing on not only the work of Thinkers, Philosophers, Climate Scientists, and Activists. I will also be drawing on the work of Warriors, Strategists, and others who have engaged in combat—mental, spiritual and physical.

So, for example, from St. Paul: “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Ephesians 6:13; English Version)

So we will have to consider the armor weapons of the Eco-Warrior, the doctrine, strategy, and tactics. These reflections, I hope, will strengthen us in the face of a total war that we are currently losing, so that we might, even in defeat, stand firm.

Externalized Costs

I am annoyed by corporations, yes, even the same transnational corporations that I depend on to make the jeans that I wear, the coffee that I drink and the paper, O God, the paper that I rely on as a writer, poet, teacher, etc.
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Without even asking my permission, they are moving their business activities to Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and other places where the people do not have the political power to push their governments to ensure safe working conditions and decent wages for workers and environmentally safe standards for manufacturing facilities. In fact, as a rule, they are usually hiding their complicity—and thereby mine—in the kinds of practices that inevitably erode political power, labor safety and environmental sustainability. And it pisses me off.

I am also deeply offended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which both force developing countries to “open” their markets to “foreign business” if they want “loans” that will help them “develop” without also mentioning how the “open markets” will change the countries’ economic basis so as to disempower the traditional small businesses and farmers and create an economic dependence on these foreign loans that will eventually (if it does not already) look disturbingly like addiction.

Wanna buy a watch? Cheap? Want some coke? Just a taste. No, really, this toot is free on me…

And I am really pissed off by the World Trade Organization, which encourages both of these “economic globalization” trends, making the conquistadors and their accompanying Christian missionaries look like innocent lambs in comparison. It's not just me who thinks this. The magazine Mother Jones has long criticized the way the WTO works.

And, naturally, the production processes, the extraordinary amount of transnational shipments of natural resources, parts and whole products rely on fossil fuels, the use of which is wrecking our planet’s climate and soon will overwhelm its natural ability to bounce back from more and more catastrophic changes.

Yes, I am mad, because I don’t know how to disengage myself from these corporations and their greedy, grimy, normal-seeming grip on my life. Going off the grid is not an option, as I do not have the skills to support myself. I am gradually trying to divest from investments in unsustainable companies, but when you make as little money as I do, you have to do this slowly so as not too lose to much of the nest-seed (it isn’t an egg, alas, not even close) that will support me when I can no longer work. And beyond even the economic side of this question, our social life, inherently, relies on objects, material objects whose manufacture puts us right in the middle of this problem.

I am grateful for Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff (and all the other versions, including those that discuss electronics, cosmetics, bottled water, cap and trade, and Citizens United). They give me, both personally as a consumer and professionally as a teacher of writing and critical thinking, tools to use to give knowledge and gain hope.

But grr. Arrgh.

Sometimes I just feel like my brain is going to pop. I can only hope that my anger gives me the passion and courage I am going to need to get through the next, wetter and messier and hotter and colder, few decades.

I suspect I’m going to need it.

The Tide Is Rising

Just last Friday, The Boston Metro did a front-page story on climate-change related flood dangers to the greater Boston area, including the expected storm surge increasing over the next 90 years. That day, Blizzard Nemo began, and ended up dumping almost 3 feet of snow on us. It seems appropriate that they named it Nemo, rather than Frosty, since the snow had barely ended before the rain began. I spent as much time wading through ice water at intersections today as I did sliding down the icy sidewalks.

I have never owned rubber boots before, but I have to say, I’m beginning to think I might just need to make that an investment, because I am pretty sure that this kind of Extreme(-ly Wet) Weather Event is only going to be more common in the coming years.

And as my financial advisor is encouraging me to buy my own place, this is one of the concerns that I am trying to figure out how to bring to conversations at open houses, for instance. I have found that when I bring up the topic of flooding into general conversations with friends, the response I often hear is that as long as I don’t live on the first floor or near the Charles River, I should be fine.

 

That seems a little naïve to me. After the Blizzard of ’78, when the snow melted and the rain came, our basement flooded, and so although the living areas weren’t affected, the cracked basement floor can’t be uncracked, and the problem of rising damp at least only grows worse over time.

I can only hope that, as the general public becomes more aware of these kinds of issues, more informed responses will become more available.

This Is Not A[n Ethnic] Joke

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Grr. Arrgh.

As it turns out, writing regularly about something you care deeply about is a problem. I do not say this as a “normal” person. I say this as a writer and a teacher of writing.

Writing is hard at the best of times. And right now when, quite literally, the water is rising in many low-lying parts of the world including our own major cities, is not the best of times. So, in the interest of offering my take both on environmental issues (on which I am surely not an expert) and on writing (on which I really am), I offer you here a frame tale, a story told about a story (kind of like Wuthering Heights, but with less over-the-top emotion and I hope more pragmatic usefulness). You can judge the ins and outs for yourself and, hopefully, draw your own (Earth-conscious) conclusion.

Two weeks ago I was in Philadelphia on a sustainability retreat organized by GreenFaith, an interfaith environmental education organization. Along with about 35 other people—including roughly 30 Christians, 3 Hindus, a Buddhist, a Jew, and a Muslim—we stayed at a Quaker retreat center called Pendle Hill and visited several sites where people are doing a variety of sustainability initiatives.

We saw the geothermal energy system and green roof at the national center for the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers). We visited the Energy Coordinating Agency, a green-jobs training center where young people learned how to weatherize and retrofit existing buildings to make them energy-efficient. And we conducted environmental audits of a church and a synagogue.

Interfaith initiatives are always fun, because you learn so much about other faiths, and they also require a little patience for the same reason, because somebody always has to explain why X Group does Y Crazy Thing, and sometimes the explanations can take a while. As you might imagine, when 35 people from 5 different faiths walk into a bar, it can take a long time to get to the punchline.

The half of the group that I was a part of was assigned to the synagogue, and my subgroup covered the Water part of the audit for that space. We looked at sinks, water fountains, toilets, urinals, refrigerators, coffee machines, potted plants, and the general risk of pipe leaks. Now, I have never spent any time in a synagogue and absolutely not while only paying attention to the water.

My group discovered that the synagogue was doing a good job avoiding bottled water at its events, but that all the toilets were standard flush. The easiest way for them to decrease the amount of water they used would be to change to low-flush toilets—the kind that make a distinction between “Number 1” and “Number 2” and allow you to choose the size of your flush accordingly. (I am not kidding. We have these at MIT and that is exactly the language they use.)

The other groups found ways for the synagogue to decrease the overall energy use and made recommendations for the avoidance and (when unavoidable) safe storage of toxic cleaning chemicals. And because they already kept a fairly complicated kitchen due to the need to separate kosher and non-kosher food, they had already done a lot of thinking around food issues.

The folks at the synagogue were as grateful for our help as we were to them for allowing us to get experience auditing with their community’s building. The exercise made the systems nature of environmental problems so much clearer, and also showed how different systems—like food and water, or water and energy—interact and/or overlap. Such dynamism means that thinking environmentally requires thinking flexibly, in a way that more traditional A-to-B-to-C linear thinking does not.

And that alone is interesting to me as a writer, since language is unavoidably linear: article to noun to verb to preposition to object… To accurately write down a complex environmental idea, one would practically have to borrow a baby’s mobile and put the words on the ends of the strings to show the dynamic relationships.

And then, if, for example, one had started writing a blog with a convenient image or phrase (ethnicity, jokes), which one thought at the time could be used to hook the reader at the start and gain closure at the end (environmental problems are no joke; insert interfaith humor here), and which later one realized wasn’t going to fly—

And if, just for example, one were Trying Very Hard to post to one’s environmental blog More Often than, say, every year or so—

Then one would, I suspect, have to be honest rather than perfectionistic, and simply post the damn thing without the pretty closure one had been, for example, hoping for.

* Sigh. *