Have you ever heard a mountain
or seen the majesty of a falling leaf
returning to the Earth
The return of spring in the opening of bloodroot
sweet redbud blossoms caress the tongue
the first new and purplish blue indigo bunting
searching for seeds
Thunderstorm in the humid Virginia hills
as we hunt for shelter
and watch in awe
song of the thrush after a hard rain
while everything glistens
Hummingbird upon rhododendron flower
frantically staying alive
always searching
riding the fragility that we take for granted
it's always a matter of scale
Golden hue of morning
diffuse, loose light
painting the visual spectrum ever so gently
Have you ever felt a mountain
silver hemlock drink from the stream
as do deer
where kingfisher hunt
and water striders play with tension
pileated woodpecker laugh
at the branches and dead wood
we cannot comprehend what lies inside
Get lost in the painting
mosaic dripping into our pores
as smell and breeze and feeling
of twig and rock against naked feet
Can you hear the mountain yet
coyote creep like ghosts
even the mighty bear makes no sound
flaming azalea and mountain laurel
outcrop of jutting rock stabbing earth
views stabbing my vibrating soul
as our frequencies coincide for
that fleeting moment
and harmony blankets my vulnerable spirit
Fat flakes of snow shadow
limbs and reveal secret paths
tongue outstretched
the crunch of winter
and new moons
and shooting stars
Entranced by the grandeur
of fractal delight
what patterns the trees
patterns you and me
and as the tree and we breathe
into one another
we finally see the truth
Simplicity of growth
life inside every death
we are a piece of the mountain
we are a piece of the field
we are seeds of change
floating as pollen towards tomorrow
ready to bloom
Have you ever become a mountain
rising
rising to the celestial heavens
flowing over the skies
I watched the world be born
inside the flames of cedar
reflected in your eyes.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Strange Rumblings from the Mountaintop that Wasn't There
Editors Note: This is far from a short post, but sometimes you just got to let it roll and let it be. And in the sense of progress the department is downsizing, so there is no editing or editor anymore, we're forced to just run all articles as are.
sweet art from NY Times awhile back
Okay, focus, relax, take a deep breath. This is going to be a long post, you may need a tall glass of wine, and this will still only be a skimming of a portion of what's going on surrounding mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining right now. And if you can get to Charleston, WV on December 7, be there!
My mind is often floating towards mountains and today is no different. But I have been thinking about the lack of mountain where recently one existed, in particular because of mountaintop removal coal mining, that hideously distasteful, disdainful, and degrading form of strip mining. One of the most destructive extractive processes we have, if you want to give it a calm name like process.
It's more like an assault, which is how many residents feel about MTR happening around them and in and around their communities. I'm not going to go into detail about the steps of what MTR is or the dozens of social injustices it causes, many people have done that already and I recommend you check out a little primer if you're unfamiliar.
But the short and gist is the removal of hardwood forest and all flora, injections of bombs made of fertilizer and diesel fuel put in the ground, mountaintops blown away allowing that rubble and earth to be pushed into adjacent valleys burying headwater streams and releasing newly oxidized minerals and heavy metals from inactivity into our system, just like the coal still holding some of those nasty extras about to be washed, shipped, and burnt, leaving a compacted moonscape after 20 story draglines and heavy machinery are through. All of which heavily impact local communities. And in the greater scheme of things all of us.
I want to focus on a few facets of this beast that have been on my mind recently. In particular, false advertising, false economics, and false choices. And more than likely a few unrelated things as my mind chaotically and sinuously flows through this topic spastically firing up in my brain.
Excuse me, did you say clean coal?
A new study has just been released, and it doesn't have any sort of fancy complicated title where you wonder what they are talking about or what the point is going to be. It's entitled, "Coal's Assault on Human Health." A report from Physicians for Social Responsibility. It focuses primarily on the impacts to our respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems.
Why do I get such a eerie feeling reading this report. It's a well put version of many ailments and problems I had heard of before, as well as a lot of little things about the degenerative ripples coming from coal throughout all stages of its life cycle.
This false notion, a public relations masterpiece, of clean coal is in strong need of being debunked. It's the smoothness of the way they say it that makes me shudder, they're so sure of it, speaking of it with such calm, ease, and faith. Our President is in that boat as well, and it makes one wonder sometimes how much truth and how much politicking is going on.
excerpt from a Friends of Coal coloring book going into some of our elementary schools, another to follow
I think the words clean and coal shouldn't be in the same sentence outside of sentences saying such. Of course there is coal that is cleaner than others in respect to the quality of the coal, the amount of btu's one gets, the amount of sulfur one gets, mercury, etc. Clean coal technology is a fanciful myth brought to you by the same wonderful minds that tell us gas guzzlers help the economy, global warming isn't necessarily a bad thing (if it exists), and since we‘re the “Saudi Arabia of Coal,” its our patriotic duty to burn it. The same people that tell us carbon capture and sequestration is our holy savior. They never seem to mention how IF it is ever used, it reduces the efficiency of the plant 20 to 40 percent, increasing demand heavily for more strip mining, which seems to me like it isn’t really getting to the root of the problem if we’re worried not only about carbon emissions but pollution, land degradation, toxic water, and a livable ecosystem.
Speaking of coal’s cleanliness, here’s the first part of the first paragraph from this new study by the Physicians for Social Responsibility.
So even if flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees, which are on the decline (though I have no data about the population changes of flowers and fairies as of late, only birds), came shooting out of the smokestacks and all the carbon was wistfully and thoughtfully put underground for some unknown set of time, there is no such thing as clean coal technology.
Every step in the process is dirty. Dirty. Very much so. But let us remember, there are no flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees coming out of our smokestacks. So what about all that respiratory loving stuff? Let's go ahead and quote the last sentence of that first paragraph of this new study.
So much for coal being clean. It sounds like that would put a huge burden on our health care system, another ‘externality’ of coal we fail to calculate into our energy policy. And for the sake of clarity, this is a strictly egocentric look at the moment, we’re not talking about the contamination that comes to the land and water rippling to us, something that is much harder to quantify, even though it exists, kind of like a haunting specter of yesteryear on a morphine and mercury drip.
I've seen a few comparisons of the coal industry to the tobacco industry lately, especially in re to advertising and pumping up their marketing and public relations as their negative health effects starts to back them into a corner.
Oh. It doesn't sound good for coal on any fronts. Good thing it's such a 'homegrown, cheap energy source.' How cheap does it sound to you?
Can we really afford to continue fooling ourselves about the cost and price of electricity as swarming amounts of information continue to collect pointing towards quite the different story? Is this blatant ignorance, apathy, greed hungry policy and regulation, a failure of democracy, or what?
Is it a problem of economics? How can our world, as far as our industrialized commerce oriented world, be governed by laws of economics that fail to consider the true costs of products or the liquidation of natural resources because it is difficult to accurately measure such pillars of our foundation. Yes it is difficult to quantify some of these functions and values of mountains, wetlands, waterways, and the atmosphere. Oftentimes things so dear to our survival, the little and big things, are next to impossible to put a price on and when one thinks about it, it makes too much sense because they are indeed priceless. That difficulty in addressing these values fails miserably as reason to ignore them in cost benefit analyses, and we are failing in not doing something about this. But there are things a stirrin', slowly.
The economies of scale are skewed. Something is awry. Short term profits that plunder long term stability do little for overall well-being and health, homeland security, or general sanity. The skewed hunger and impatience of our greased and well oiled machine will make you go crazy. Plum, bonafied crazy. So don't stare at it too long, or look the beast in the eyes unless you want your circuits fried worse than Johnny 5 that one time he got turned into a bad guy. But seriously.
As Jesus said, 'there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
We need to work on a way of integrating new components of our world and these complicated interconnections into our decision making processes. We're like a dull heartbeat stuck in a lull, pumping but fading with just enough to keep going in some semblance of living as long as we borrow a little more from China. The system needs a strong jolt, a shock, a lightning bolt flaming whip of fresh ideas and edited playbooks traveling down the path of least resistance, just like a strong current enjoys. If we're going to continue to take and take from nature, we might as well take more biomimicry as well.
MTR - Mountain Top Removal or Morality Tax Recession. False dichotomies and mountainous lobotomies, how does it feel to be an externality?
What's up with all these disconnects? We need a binding line, where does it hide?
The snip snip of our detachment from nature detaches us from much, one of many being common sense. Perhaps it will return in atavistic fashion. Once we, as a society, become detached from nature, it makes sense to measure the health of our nation preeminently from the health of our market and not the health of our environment.
The detachment limits any smooth integration of the two that would inherently be present in any civilization that understood it's connection to the land. Physically, mentally, and spiritually. The detachment digs deeper into our psyche fueling further disconnect through current lifestyle norms in spiraling positive feedback fashion. If detachment pushes our interests towards more technologically oriented mediums of communication, recreation, and education, it pushes us towards more energy consuming hours on the laptop and tele and less immersion in the 'real world,' doing little to bridge the gap and more to strain the possibility of a successful operation to begin to reconnect the strings.
Chief Seattle's proverbial web of life is a little battered and torn, but I believe and hope it is time and a slow healing is due.
Back to the root, or rut, as we pronounce it in the country, serendipitously they both work at the moment. I believe this disconnect is further tainting our eyes, our perception, or perhaps it's just a major deficiency in vitamin A and a few B's from processed foods, but this disconnect is impeding our vision of each other.
The hard working folks that are speaking up about mountain top removal coal mining and its impacts to communities are not tree huggers out to kill miners’ jobs. First off, it's more like a few operator jobs that are at stake, jobs that could be replaced by green jobs, but just where exactly are these green jobs, they need to be made!
The miners all lost their jobs to draglines and improved profit margins of machines. These organizers are interested in diversifying the economies of the coalfields. Oppressive monoeconomies are tough cookies to crumble though, and they've got razor witted plans to disrupt any organizing efforts to dismantle their empire of dust covered glamor. They specialize time to time in how to divide. How to push and coil the minds of people until folks are sure as can be all those stinkin’ tree huggers just want to kill all their jobs for the sake of some bugs. It's crazy how much we try to reduce situations sometimes, how easy it is to manipulate or womanipulate anything into something or something into nothing, and how difficult it is to have a healthy open discussion when false lines have been drawn in the sand.
It is a far cry to call someone an environmentalist because they believe in clean air, clean water, and clean land, and believe their children deserve such things. Does that make someone a tree hugger?
It's maddeningly funny how past perceptions and actions of those crazy enviro's has caused anyone who stands up for what we stand on to be cast out as a dirty tree hugger. They are thrown into this category of being anti-industry, anti-jobs, anti-growth, and even sometimes anti-American. Another puzzle piece in the successful sorcery of rotten public relations.
Some of these destructive stigma blinders prevent people from seeing the social justice side of so called tree huggers. Many are just people interested in community, empowering communities, and the health and future well-being of communities. That sounds like diversified smart growth to me, not anti-growth. And it sure as apple pie sounds patriotic to me, helping our communities, a far cry from what I would say Wal-mart, or the People's Republic of China Merchandise Distribution Center, feels like.
Patriotism is an interesting word, drawing up excitement in people's hearts and feelings of being proud about your homeland. A far cry from what blowing up our own backyard and headwater sources and poisoning our communities feels like. That's more of a sick gut wrenching madness like watching someone cut themselves repeatedly day after day, or maybe more accurately cutting chunks from themselves, it makes you shudder and it leaves scars for both parties, physical scars on the source and mental scars for letting it continue as we all watch live from our television and computer screens. The cutting and defleshing is subtle, changed in all the 1's and 0's into more digestible chunks of news updates, facebook profiles, gmail, and of course blogs.
taken from a powerful Google Earth based project that can be found on ilovemountains.org
Some of these same mind limiting stigma's that prevent us from seeing the good hearted foundation of social justice work prohibit an accurate perception of Appalachian Culture for its beauty, self reliance, diversity, and historical roots as well. The same stigma's that somehow help justify in some twisted way the collateral damage of dealing with the upheaval of their heritage, land, and communities prevent us from truly relating to this miscarriage of justice and the bloody, slurry filled ooze creeping through the flattened mountains and drinking water.
The release of tainted secrets whisper dirty things into us.
False choices. Would you rather have the environment or jobs? Do we really need to choose between the two? We're not returning into being hunter-gatherers and we're not transforming into soulless machines on assembly lines either. There is a middle ground, and a healthy balance is just what the good doctor ordered.
How do we bridge some of these gaps, how do we reconnect some of these strings?
Ok, this rambles a bit, but biomimicry tells me to just go with the flow and I'm feeling a tinge of want to dig deeper, and I don't want to stop. Gravity pushes us ever onward. So, if you're in the mood, let's go down the old coal rabbit hole a little deeper underground and see where we get. And yes, we are all mad here...
In the land of milk and honey and luscious bounty the mountains flung themselves across the horizon in waves and swarms of teaming life and sound and scampering whispers as the breeze sneaks across leaves and branch and whisker.
And then the big bang came, again of course, and again. The big bang of the mountaintop being blown off. And everything changed.
Let there be light. Let there be darkness. The darkness we uncover brings us the light. The darkness we uncover reveals the darkness inside ourselves. But it also burns us towards a different light, a light at the end of the tunnel that may indeed be something other than a coal truck barreling our way.
Speaking of patriotism, what is best for our country, and loving your neighbor, isn't all of these degenerative and dehabilitating toxins a direct threat to our homeland security? Today and more so tomorrow, which is a further blow to our economy in extra health care needed, people living and working at sub par levels, increase in disease, decreased land and water value, increase in remediation efforts, and the depressing message we send to our citizens that we aren't quite as advanced, civilized, or smart as we thought.
Catch 22
How do you bring job diversity into a region dominated by an oppressive monoeconomy whose true cost is nowhere near accurate through the fallacies of inadequate assessment of 'externalities' and the fact that it's subsidized by the government?
We need job options for residents of the coalfields, and we need them before, during, and after MTR is phased out. Is it realistic, feasible, or completely idyllic for mountaintop removal operators to check out of their strip sites and walk across the street and check in to a solar energy manufacturer and installer?
I'm not sure. The idea sounds crazy, it's a fantastical thought. For now it seems improbable, but not impossible, and in today's rapid pace of change maybe soon enough that idea could be a concrete reality.
The problem is getting industry there. Ironically MTR proponents run to the idea like wounded dogs run home about the fact that in the mountains it’s too steep for industry to come in, how these flat tops are necessary. It’s their justification of lack of remediation and their loop hole about not returning the mountain to its AOC, approximate original contour, like they are supposed to. There’s a jail, Wal-Mart, golf course and some other structures on some old strip mine sites, but seriously, if they’ve got all these flattened mountains for business why can’t we get some factories, textiles, and manufacturers to come in and give people jobs. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fears of the land subsiding, the problems of compacted fill, groundwater, and wells, and who knows what else.
It seems very difficult to get any new industry in the coalfield regions. How do we do it? Luckily quite a few folks with much more knowledge than me have been thinking about this for awhile. SEED , a recently new group seeming to have some potential in opening up this riddle, Appalachian Community and Economics, and probably some other organizations are focusing on this dire issue bottle necking the progression of life in the coalfields.
What are green jobs, and where are they? If they were needed anywhere it's in the coalfields. Green jobs could open up options, something people in that region aren't used to having. Coal will be used for awhile, it is true, but we still need to start the transition of doing other things, as well as the way in which we extract, burn, and dispose of coal waste which needs an upgrade and upheaval.
Is MTR contributing a mere 4% of American coal? If so...(I don't know, I've heard different figures and know strip mining makes up much more but for MTR I really would like to know)
While we will burn coal and other carbon based fuels for awhile, the transition period will be getting well underway in the upcoming decade. MTR coal mining makes up such a small percentage of the coal we burn and a disproportionately large percentage of the ill effects done to the land, ill effects that cannot be undone. Ending MTR is something that is very feasible, simple efficiencies alone are able to more than cover the demand equal to that 4%.
Reclamation, when it is actually done, which isn't that often, can help return a piece of land into something better than the barren moonscape, however it is a far cry from the diversity of the virgin mountain, no matter what. Reclamation has gotten much better but it's still one of those times when you're sort of putting a band-aid on a bullet hole. Lipstick on a corpse is probably the most famous quote, and quite a good analogy.
If MTR creates so many jobs why are there 100,000 less mining jobs than 50 years ago? Because MTR and the mechanization of the process destroy not only the land and communities but they destroy jobs. Massey and other mining companies could easily employ more miners and tighten down on deep mining safety if they really wanted to create more jobs. But it wouldn't be as profitable, so we won't see it, because when it's all said and done they aren't concerned about their workers, they're concerned about quarterly profits and projected earnings. Yes, some of these areas aren't feasible to be extracted via deep mining, but I would argue they aren't feasible through extreme forms of strip mining as well. It's nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit but they're singing on both sides of the fence spreading lies both ways.
OSM, the Office of Surface Mining, and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, have had their sights on MTR lately and getting a lot of grief over lollygagging, rhetoric, and the trials of jumping through the hoops of the process. The dumping of mining waste and rubble into streams is perhaps the easiest and simplest atrocity they should do something about. And they want your input.
Any civilization that disregards their freshwater as a top priority in all scales of planning is destined to trouble, despair, and downfall on a long enough time line.
Our present rules and regulations are not only a falsehood of our economics and our survival but they show our shortfalls as citizens and communities to not stand up for basic human needs. It is dire and time just munches on.
The insatiable hunger of time moves us ever forward and we must wonder if our own insatiable appetite is agreeable with our present action, methodology, and policy. It's definitely time for some changes. There's a time and rhyme for every season.
With the passage of time more explosives will shake and crumble more of some of our oldest mountains and bury some of the streams that many, many folk are downstream from. OSM says their process won't show any rule changes until at least 2011.
NWP 21, under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, has been highlighted recently as the EPA is having some public hearings about whether this permit option should continue. NWP 21 is a sort of weak, wide spanning blanket letting coal companies get around needing a public comment period, and anyways this rubber stamp was never intended for valley fills from coal mining, it was for projects with 'minimal' environmental impacts. But the beast that is NWP 21 has turned into a voracious gumming whore with no teeth, sucking life out of the land and giving a helping hand to coal companies. It's a horrid site, believe me.
There is a strong, dire need for individual permits to be required, for the impacts to waterways and public health to be looked at via meaningful evaluation, not this calm acceptance of trust or ignorance we’ve seen from the Army Corp of Engineers.
The largest MTR site’s permit has been put on hold for consideration of its size causing impacts to our waterways exceeding what is allowed. This is one of only a handful of times this power has been exercised. Again we are brought to the puzzle. Do not all the pieces also make the whole? The law of accumulation can only be diluted so far. If we are to admit the whole is bad are not all the pieces also?
I think its notable and a good step for this permit to be put on hold, for us to take a better look but all I foresee is more smaller permits if it is a hindrance to the coal industry, a tactic they already use for loopholes. But perhaps we will get some more decisive action, something with some real teeth in it. Now with the EPA, OSM, Senator Byrd, and a plethora of others showing interest as well there is starting to be some real focus on mountain top removal.
In the year of our Lord 2009 A.D. bifurcation points grow and reach new heights. While James Inhofe labeled 2009 as the Year of the Skeptic, perhaps 2010 will become the Year the Mountain Remained.
Cumulative impacts must grant warrant to change this. Dumping waste into our streams is ecocide with no concern for the future. Protecting our nation's waterways should be an utmost priority for homeland security and a basic signal that we understand water as a basic necessity of all life. After all the purpose of the Clean Water Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.
Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless.
The recent hearings over the future of NWP 21 have been met with obnoxious, freedom of speech impeding busloads of miners paid by their companies to raise raucous, prevent citizens from entering the hearings, and screaming and jeering nonstop so public recorders can't hear citizens concerns about this permitting process, which then never make the record. Luckily many people submit comments via the internet or paper. Elderly women have been threatened and have had to be escorted back to their vehicles by security. It is childish, irresponsible, crazed behavior and will more than likely only intensify as this growing momentum builds against mountaintop removal coal mining. The miners are being force fed their jobs are at stake by their higher ups.
You can frame a picture a certain way, it doesn't mean its accurate or straight. Don Blankenship, famed mortician, actor, and CEO of Massey Energy is up to his normal tomfoolery and outright ethical debauchery. I'm reminded of Vivian Stockman's eloquent words comparing his company to a sociopath under the idea of a corporation being an entity, and any entity is going to have personality, however exciting, dull, or crazy and demented it is. It was at a hearing a few years ago inside the gym at Marsh Fork Elementary about another coal silo being constructed next to the school.
Don Blankenship never ceases to amaze. Nor does irony. Don recently wrote a letter about China's environmental standards, making a methodical mention of children and how important it is to protect our children. He used the word children eight times in the article. Other than reaffirming everyone's worries about his concern for children, he also makes it clear that global warming is a theory, development takes precedent over environment, and he is against lax safeguards that allow heavy metals and toxic materials to leach into our intake stream. How interesting.
Maybe Don had a change of face, and maybe he will use some of his land to put up a new Marsh Fork Elementary on, or at least let them use some of his equipment to prep the site. But I do find it odd how he seems so concerned about children's safety after his blatant disregard during the on going years of talk, trouble, and sickness occurring at Marsh Fork Elementary in Sundial, WV. And just his general accounting mindset when it comes to profit margins dictating his actions when it comes to topics like sludge injections, blasting near communities, and all the other social issues related to mountaintop removal coal mining and other forms of strip mining.
Ed Wiley’s wise words come in waves when I think about Marsh Fork and MTR.
Senator Byrd is getting more involved. He knows of the recent announcement from the Obama Administration that is planning to increase federal oversight of mining operations. He's ready to get involved. And he knows about one nasty evil of MTR very well, Marsh Fork Elementary. And it seems the School Board is Finally calling out for funds to move the kids away from being directly under 2.8 billion gallons of sludge and a coal processing plant.
photo taken from ilovemountains.org
It is still unknown whether funding will be granted to move the school, but there is a chance. Concerned citizens have been raising awareness about this issue and raising money themselves for years now. For a little background, here’s an old article I wrote during Ed Wiley’s walk from Gov. Manchin's place in Charleston, WV to Senator Byrd's office in DC, arriving the same time as an unveiling of ilovemountains.org, a great website of info and knowledge, as well as the beginning campaign of the Clean Water Protection Act, part of Lobby Week which will be happening again pretty soon.
There's a great 23 minute video about Ed's walk to Byrd's office (via the concerned citizens link). These ripples and the ripples of others took awhile, but they finally caught up. Ed is one great stand-up guy, and I'm proud to know him for the good he's brought those kids, inspired by his own granddaughter.
Yet the EPA who just released an 'environmental justice showcase' of 10 communities didn't include one community in the whole of Appalachia.
Don Blankenship has been preemptively letting us know about lay offs, blaming environmentalists, Democrats, and possibly even the bad advice of his Vedic astrologer. It's pretty low when you want to keep your profit margins at a certain level and can do it by laying off workers but you want to dig that line in the sand a little deeper by giving false motives for firing workers. He tells shareholders one thing about the security of his company, permits, and jobs, and tells his workers another.
So, about all of this wealth, all these jobs the mining industry is proclaiming it creates. Why are the mining regions some of the poorest in the southeast and nation, why is unemployment higher than the national average? All the money leaves with the coal, going to the big wigs and shareholders, doing very little to nothing for local economies. At least very little to nothing positive for local economies.
You lose the things you love and you learn how important things are, you learn how to miss them. You learn what matters.
The recent secret meeting between Gov. Manchin, Blankenship, and a few other big players in the coal industry including a couple representatives show they are ready to get their 2 cents in as far as what's going on behind the scenes and they're also confused and concerned over what will be unfolding about the future of coal mining regulations.
Hm, we've got some serious mid and long term regional planning issues that are going to be one long row to how. Logistical nightmares that we better start planning and strategizing for, for homeland security, happiness, general well-being, health, sanity, and let us not forget that evasive integral factor and motivation, common sense.
Yes, it's long been said the creed is greed and we know short term profits have been governing the Big decisions for awhile, but its time for a new way of thinking and we no longer have the luxury of our inaction and the buffering capacity of time to hold the blinders of the results of our actions and means of existing, i.e. energy. We know too much to do so little. Why are all these little pieces of the puzzle not being connected? Why can we see the trees but not the forest, or the mountainside? It's time to batten the hatch and really get to the heart of this bugger. But for that we're going to have to go deep and deep and deeper still.
These are some serious questions, with even more serious implications. Amplification and bifurcation points tumult us. The ripples grow and its about time to start some more positive waves. The family friendly, PG type. None of this cheap, horrific gratuitous rape and assault and defecation we're used to. No, the future ain't what it used to be, but its still what we make it.
The dots are just not connecting or adding up in our decision making process and policy. Detachment is a bad thing, at least in re our detachment from reality, ourselves, and the Earth and it is prohibiting and inhibiting many of us to connect the strings. The web of life is torn and fettered, and we have to repair it.
I'd say we were doomed if it wasn't for that one monkey wrench in the human spirit, our stubborn ingenuity, our inability to accept certain things, inalienable rights, our drive when pushed into the corner, our will to survive. I'm hungry for that ingenuity. Salivating at the mouth like one of Pavlov's dogs sitting in the middle of a glorious and repugnant minefield. What will it take for our communities to unite and rise together for freedom from the oppressive and self-mutilating chains of our own poor energy policy?
There is something happening here, and what it is, isn't all too clear. But things are moving, the wheels are in motion, we are left to ask to what end? By what means? At the moment there's so much going on about climate change and one example of point source climate change, MTR. I am thankful for that, the fact we're discussing such relevant prevalent issues.
But the distance between discussion and implementation is what concerns me. Real implementation too, not these gumming whores having no teeth. Just awful. Perhaps the hammer is finally dropping. I surely hope so, for our sake and for the kids. it's always been about the kids. No one deserves someone else’s mess, especially this kind of king hell brain buster.
Some people tell me I live in the woods too much, 'what would you know of what's really going on, in the real world.' I guess this is true, to some extent, but I do have an idea, which isn't too much less than what anyone has, and probably more than some. I enjoy the facts, but it is what or how I feel inside that I try to listen to. What feels right?
It’s harder and harder to give into these atavistic endeavors today. We, the intelligent animal, have become so brain, or pleasure center, oriented we allow little room for intuition, let alone the strange vibrations of our souls. How does all this have anything to do with the climate and mountains. It's a surefire nasty slobber knocker Catch 22. One, our detachment, and two, our need for reattachment to nature amidst the ever pressing sprawl of us, urbanization, commercialization, indoctrination, and of course, electron elation. We've got to overhaul our ways of thinking about energy, from the cradle to the grave, if we want to continue to prosper and live merrily into this new century.
William Arthur Ward once said the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails.
As we adjust inside this new millennium it’s clear some creatures aren't meant to survive, and MTR is surely one of those beasts.
>photo from www.ohvec.org, the best source for daily MTR related news
‘It’s more than just air pollution. You gotta clean your brain.’
~Nina Simone
sweet art from NY Times awhile back
Okay, focus, relax, take a deep breath. This is going to be a long post, you may need a tall glass of wine, and this will still only be a skimming of a portion of what's going on surrounding mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining right now. And if you can get to Charleston, WV on December 7, be there!
My mind is often floating towards mountains and today is no different. But I have been thinking about the lack of mountain where recently one existed, in particular because of mountaintop removal coal mining, that hideously distasteful, disdainful, and degrading form of strip mining. One of the most destructive extractive processes we have, if you want to give it a calm name like process.
It's more like an assault, which is how many residents feel about MTR happening around them and in and around their communities. I'm not going to go into detail about the steps of what MTR is or the dozens of social injustices it causes, many people have done that already and I recommend you check out a little primer if you're unfamiliar.
But the short and gist is the removal of hardwood forest and all flora, injections of bombs made of fertilizer and diesel fuel put in the ground, mountaintops blown away allowing that rubble and earth to be pushed into adjacent valleys burying headwater streams and releasing newly oxidized minerals and heavy metals from inactivity into our system, just like the coal still holding some of those nasty extras about to be washed, shipped, and burnt, leaving a compacted moonscape after 20 story draglines and heavy machinery are through. All of which heavily impact local communities. And in the greater scheme of things all of us.
I want to focus on a few facets of this beast that have been on my mind recently. In particular, false advertising, false economics, and false choices. And more than likely a few unrelated things as my mind chaotically and sinuously flows through this topic spastically firing up in my brain.
Excuse me, did you say clean coal?
A new study has just been released, and it doesn't have any sort of fancy complicated title where you wonder what they are talking about or what the point is going to be. It's entitled, "Coal's Assault on Human Health." A report from Physicians for Social Responsibility. It focuses primarily on the impacts to our respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems.
Why do I get such a eerie feeling reading this report. It's a well put version of many ailments and problems I had heard of before, as well as a lot of little things about the degenerative ripples coming from coal throughout all stages of its life cycle.
James 3:6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
This false notion, a public relations masterpiece, of clean coal is in strong need of being debunked. It's the smoothness of the way they say it that makes me shudder, they're so sure of it, speaking of it with such calm, ease, and faith. Our President is in that boat as well, and it makes one wonder sometimes how much truth and how much politicking is going on.
excerpt from a Friends of Coal coloring book going into some of our elementary schools, another to follow
I think the words clean and coal shouldn't be in the same sentence outside of sentences saying such. Of course there is coal that is cleaner than others in respect to the quality of the coal, the amount of btu's one gets, the amount of sulfur one gets, mercury, etc. Clean coal technology is a fanciful myth brought to you by the same wonderful minds that tell us gas guzzlers help the economy, global warming isn't necessarily a bad thing (if it exists), and since we‘re the “Saudi Arabia of Coal,” its our patriotic duty to burn it. The same people that tell us carbon capture and sequestration is our holy savior. They never seem to mention how IF it is ever used, it reduces the efficiency of the plant 20 to 40 percent, increasing demand heavily for more strip mining, which seems to me like it isn’t really getting to the root of the problem if we’re worried not only about carbon emissions but pollution, land degradation, toxic water, and a livable ecosystem.
Speaking of coal’s cleanliness, here’s the first part of the first paragraph from this new study by the Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle—mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes—impacts human health.
So even if flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees, which are on the decline (though I have no data about the population changes of flowers and fairies as of late, only birds), came shooting out of the smokestacks and all the carbon was wistfully and thoughtfully put underground for some unknown set of time, there is no such thing as clean coal technology.
Every step in the process is dirty. Dirty. Very much so. But let us remember, there are no flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees coming out of our smokestacks. So what about all that respiratory loving stuff? Let's go ahead and quote the last sentence of that first paragraph of this new study.
Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.
So much for coal being clean. It sounds like that would put a huge burden on our health care system, another ‘externality’ of coal we fail to calculate into our energy policy. And for the sake of clarity, this is a strictly egocentric look at the moment, we’re not talking about the contamination that comes to the land and water rippling to us, something that is much harder to quantify, even though it exists, kind of like a haunting specter of yesteryear on a morphine and mercury drip.
I've seen a few comparisons of the coal industry to the tobacco industry lately, especially in re to advertising and pumping up their marketing and public relations as their negative health effects starts to back them into a corner.
Oh. It doesn't sound good for coal on any fronts. Good thing it's such a 'homegrown, cheap energy source.' How cheap does it sound to you?
And cancer, the great teacher
Has been opening schools
Downstream from every factory
Still, everywhere fools are
Squinting into microscopes
Researching cells
Trying to figure out a way
That we can all live in hell
Well, step back, look up
You'll see I'm dimming the sun
But you won't, will you?
Oh, that's a good little one
~Ani Difranco
Can we really afford to continue fooling ourselves about the cost and price of electricity as swarming amounts of information continue to collect pointing towards quite the different story? Is this blatant ignorance, apathy, greed hungry policy and regulation, a failure of democracy, or what?
Is it a problem of economics? How can our world, as far as our industrialized commerce oriented world, be governed by laws of economics that fail to consider the true costs of products or the liquidation of natural resources because it is difficult to accurately measure such pillars of our foundation. Yes it is difficult to quantify some of these functions and values of mountains, wetlands, waterways, and the atmosphere. Oftentimes things so dear to our survival, the little and big things, are next to impossible to put a price on and when one thinks about it, it makes too much sense because they are indeed priceless. That difficulty in addressing these values fails miserably as reason to ignore them in cost benefit analyses, and we are failing in not doing something about this. But there are things a stirrin', slowly.
Lamentations 1:2 She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.
The economies of scale are skewed. Something is awry. Short term profits that plunder long term stability do little for overall well-being and health, homeland security, or general sanity. The skewed hunger and impatience of our greased and well oiled machine will make you go crazy. Plum, bonafied crazy. So don't stare at it too long, or look the beast in the eyes unless you want your circuits fried worse than Johnny 5 that one time he got turned into a bad guy. But seriously.
As Jesus said, 'there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'
The reason for all the confusion is that there are two paths of human knowledge - discriminating and non-discriminating...I deny the empty image of nature as experienced by the non-discriminating understanding. If we eradicate the false conception of nature, I believe the root of the world's disorder will disappear...Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed; it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul.
~Masanobu Fukuoka
We need to work on a way of integrating new components of our world and these complicated interconnections into our decision making processes. We're like a dull heartbeat stuck in a lull, pumping but fading with just enough to keep going in some semblance of living as long as we borrow a little more from China. The system needs a strong jolt, a shock, a lightning bolt flaming whip of fresh ideas and edited playbooks traveling down the path of least resistance, just like a strong current enjoys. If we're going to continue to take and take from nature, we might as well take more biomimicry as well.
MTR - Mountain Top Removal or Morality Tax Recession. False dichotomies and mountainous lobotomies, how does it feel to be an externality?
What's up with all these disconnects? We need a binding line, where does it hide?
The snip snip of our detachment from nature detaches us from much, one of many being common sense. Perhaps it will return in atavistic fashion. Once we, as a society, become detached from nature, it makes sense to measure the health of our nation preeminently from the health of our market and not the health of our environment.
Ecclesiastes 5: 9-10 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all. The king himself is served by the field. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
The detachment limits any smooth integration of the two that would inherently be present in any civilization that understood it's connection to the land. Physically, mentally, and spiritually. The detachment digs deeper into our psyche fueling further disconnect through current lifestyle norms in spiraling positive feedback fashion. If detachment pushes our interests towards more technologically oriented mediums of communication, recreation, and education, it pushes us towards more energy consuming hours on the laptop and tele and less immersion in the 'real world,' doing little to bridge the gap and more to strain the possibility of a successful operation to begin to reconnect the strings.
The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~Marya Mannes
Chief Seattle's proverbial web of life is a little battered and torn, but I believe and hope it is time and a slow healing is due.
Back to the root, or rut, as we pronounce it in the country, serendipitously they both work at the moment. I believe this disconnect is further tainting our eyes, our perception, or perhaps it's just a major deficiency in vitamin A and a few B's from processed foods, but this disconnect is impeding our vision of each other.
The hard working folks that are speaking up about mountain top removal coal mining and its impacts to communities are not tree huggers out to kill miners’ jobs. First off, it's more like a few operator jobs that are at stake, jobs that could be replaced by green jobs, but just where exactly are these green jobs, they need to be made!
The miners all lost their jobs to draglines and improved profit margins of machines. These organizers are interested in diversifying the economies of the coalfields. Oppressive monoeconomies are tough cookies to crumble though, and they've got razor witted plans to disrupt any organizing efforts to dismantle their empire of dust covered glamor. They specialize time to time in how to divide. How to push and coil the minds of people until folks are sure as can be all those stinkin’ tree huggers just want to kill all their jobs for the sake of some bugs. It's crazy how much we try to reduce situations sometimes, how easy it is to manipulate or womanipulate anything into something or something into nothing, and how difficult it is to have a healthy open discussion when false lines have been drawn in the sand.
It is a far cry to call someone an environmentalist because they believe in clean air, clean water, and clean land, and believe their children deserve such things. Does that make someone a tree hugger?
It's maddeningly funny how past perceptions and actions of those crazy enviro's has caused anyone who stands up for what we stand on to be cast out as a dirty tree hugger. They are thrown into this category of being anti-industry, anti-jobs, anti-growth, and even sometimes anti-American. Another puzzle piece in the successful sorcery of rotten public relations.
Some of these destructive stigma blinders prevent people from seeing the social justice side of so called tree huggers. Many are just people interested in community, empowering communities, and the health and future well-being of communities. That sounds like diversified smart growth to me, not anti-growth. And it sure as apple pie sounds patriotic to me, helping our communities, a far cry from what I would say Wal-mart, or the People's Republic of China Merchandise Distribution Center, feels like.
Patriotism is an interesting word, drawing up excitement in people's hearts and feelings of being proud about your homeland. A far cry from what blowing up our own backyard and headwater sources and poisoning our communities feels like. That's more of a sick gut wrenching madness like watching someone cut themselves repeatedly day after day, or maybe more accurately cutting chunks from themselves, it makes you shudder and it leaves scars for both parties, physical scars on the source and mental scars for letting it continue as we all watch live from our television and computer screens. The cutting and defleshing is subtle, changed in all the 1's and 0's into more digestible chunks of news updates, facebook profiles, gmail, and of course blogs.
taken from a powerful Google Earth based project that can be found on ilovemountains.org
Some of these same mind limiting stigma's that prevent us from seeing the good hearted foundation of social justice work prohibit an accurate perception of Appalachian Culture for its beauty, self reliance, diversity, and historical roots as well. The same stigma's that somehow help justify in some twisted way the collateral damage of dealing with the upheaval of their heritage, land, and communities prevent us from truly relating to this miscarriage of justice and the bloody, slurry filled ooze creeping through the flattened mountains and drinking water.
After removal of coal from a mine, threats to public health persist. When mines are abandoned, rainwater reacts with exposed rock to cause the oxidation of metal sulfide minerals. This reaction releases iron, aluminum, cadmium, and copper into the surrounding water system and can contaminate drinking water.
The release of tainted secrets whisper dirty things into us.
False choices. Would you rather have the environment or jobs? Do we really need to choose between the two? We're not returning into being hunter-gatherers and we're not transforming into soulless machines on assembly lines either. There is a middle ground, and a healthy balance is just what the good doctor ordered.
How do we bridge some of these gaps, how do we reconnect some of these strings?
Ok, this rambles a bit, but biomimicry tells me to just go with the flow and I'm feeling a tinge of want to dig deeper, and I don't want to stop. Gravity pushes us ever onward. So, if you're in the mood, let's go down the old coal rabbit hole a little deeper underground and see where we get. And yes, we are all mad here...
In the land of milk and honey and luscious bounty the mountains flung themselves across the horizon in waves and swarms of teaming life and sound and scampering whispers as the breeze sneaks across leaves and branch and whisker.
And then the big bang came, again of course, and again. The big bang of the mountaintop being blown off. And everything changed.
Let there be light. Let there be darkness. The darkness we uncover brings us the light. The darkness we uncover reveals the darkness inside ourselves. But it also burns us towards a different light, a light at the end of the tunnel that may indeed be something other than a coal truck barreling our way.
Speaking of patriotism, what is best for our country, and loving your neighbor, isn't all of these degenerative and dehabilitating toxins a direct threat to our homeland security? Today and more so tomorrow, which is a further blow to our economy in extra health care needed, people living and working at sub par levels, increase in disease, decreased land and water value, increase in remediation efforts, and the depressing message we send to our citizens that we aren't quite as advanced, civilized, or smart as we thought.
Catch 22
How do you bring job diversity into a region dominated by an oppressive monoeconomy whose true cost is nowhere near accurate through the fallacies of inadequate assessment of 'externalities' and the fact that it's subsidized by the government?
We need job options for residents of the coalfields, and we need them before, during, and after MTR is phased out. Is it realistic, feasible, or completely idyllic for mountaintop removal operators to check out of their strip sites and walk across the street and check in to a solar energy manufacturer and installer?
I'm not sure. The idea sounds crazy, it's a fantastical thought. For now it seems improbable, but not impossible, and in today's rapid pace of change maybe soon enough that idea could be a concrete reality.
The problem is getting industry there. Ironically MTR proponents run to the idea like wounded dogs run home about the fact that in the mountains it’s too steep for industry to come in, how these flat tops are necessary. It’s their justification of lack of remediation and their loop hole about not returning the mountain to its AOC, approximate original contour, like they are supposed to. There’s a jail, Wal-Mart, golf course and some other structures on some old strip mine sites, but seriously, if they’ve got all these flattened mountains for business why can’t we get some factories, textiles, and manufacturers to come in and give people jobs. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fears of the land subsiding, the problems of compacted fill, groundwater, and wells, and who knows what else.
It seems very difficult to get any new industry in the coalfield regions. How do we do it? Luckily quite a few folks with much more knowledge than me have been thinking about this for awhile. SEED , a recently new group seeming to have some potential in opening up this riddle, Appalachian Community and Economics, and probably some other organizations are focusing on this dire issue bottle necking the progression of life in the coalfields.
What are green jobs, and where are they? If they were needed anywhere it's in the coalfields. Green jobs could open up options, something people in that region aren't used to having. Coal will be used for awhile, it is true, but we still need to start the transition of doing other things, as well as the way in which we extract, burn, and dispose of coal waste which needs an upgrade and upheaval.
Is MTR contributing a mere 4% of American coal? If so...(I don't know, I've heard different figures and know strip mining makes up much more but for MTR I really would like to know)
While we will burn coal and other carbon based fuels for awhile, the transition period will be getting well underway in the upcoming decade. MTR coal mining makes up such a small percentage of the coal we burn and a disproportionately large percentage of the ill effects done to the land, ill effects that cannot be undone. Ending MTR is something that is very feasible, simple efficiencies alone are able to more than cover the demand equal to that 4%.
Reclamation, when it is actually done, which isn't that often, can help return a piece of land into something better than the barren moonscape, however it is a far cry from the diversity of the virgin mountain, no matter what. Reclamation has gotten much better but it's still one of those times when you're sort of putting a band-aid on a bullet hole. Lipstick on a corpse is probably the most famous quote, and quite a good analogy.
If MTR creates so many jobs why are there 100,000 less mining jobs than 50 years ago? Because MTR and the mechanization of the process destroy not only the land and communities but they destroy jobs. Massey and other mining companies could easily employ more miners and tighten down on deep mining safety if they really wanted to create more jobs. But it wouldn't be as profitable, so we won't see it, because when it's all said and done they aren't concerned about their workers, they're concerned about quarterly profits and projected earnings. Yes, some of these areas aren't feasible to be extracted via deep mining, but I would argue they aren't feasible through extreme forms of strip mining as well. It's nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit but they're singing on both sides of the fence spreading lies both ways.
OSM, the Office of Surface Mining, and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, have had their sights on MTR lately and getting a lot of grief over lollygagging, rhetoric, and the trials of jumping through the hoops of the process. The dumping of mining waste and rubble into streams is perhaps the easiest and simplest atrocity they should do something about. And they want your input.
Any civilization that disregards their freshwater as a top priority in all scales of planning is destined to trouble, despair, and downfall on a long enough time line.
Our present rules and regulations are not only a falsehood of our economics and our survival but they show our shortfalls as citizens and communities to not stand up for basic human needs. It is dire and time just munches on.
Ecclesiastes 4:5 The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.
The insatiable hunger of time moves us ever forward and we must wonder if our own insatiable appetite is agreeable with our present action, methodology, and policy. It's definitely time for some changes. There's a time and rhyme for every season.
With the passage of time more explosives will shake and crumble more of some of our oldest mountains and bury some of the streams that many, many folk are downstream from. OSM says their process won't show any rule changes until at least 2011.
NWP 21, under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, has been highlighted recently as the EPA is having some public hearings about whether this permit option should continue. NWP 21 is a sort of weak, wide spanning blanket letting coal companies get around needing a public comment period, and anyways this rubber stamp was never intended for valley fills from coal mining, it was for projects with 'minimal' environmental impacts. But the beast that is NWP 21 has turned into a voracious gumming whore with no teeth, sucking life out of the land and giving a helping hand to coal companies. It's a horrid site, believe me.
There is a strong, dire need for individual permits to be required, for the impacts to waterways and public health to be looked at via meaningful evaluation, not this calm acceptance of trust or ignorance we’ve seen from the Army Corp of Engineers.
The largest MTR site’s permit has been put on hold for consideration of its size causing impacts to our waterways exceeding what is allowed. This is one of only a handful of times this power has been exercised. Again we are brought to the puzzle. Do not all the pieces also make the whole? The law of accumulation can only be diluted so far. If we are to admit the whole is bad are not all the pieces also?
I think its notable and a good step for this permit to be put on hold, for us to take a better look but all I foresee is more smaller permits if it is a hindrance to the coal industry, a tactic they already use for loopholes. But perhaps we will get some more decisive action, something with some real teeth in it. Now with the EPA, OSM, Senator Byrd, and a plethora of others showing interest as well there is starting to be some real focus on mountain top removal.
In the year of our Lord 2009 A.D. bifurcation points grow and reach new heights. While James Inhofe labeled 2009 as the Year of the Skeptic, perhaps 2010 will become the Year the Mountain Remained.
Cumulative impacts must grant warrant to change this. Dumping waste into our streams is ecocide with no concern for the future. Protecting our nation's waterways should be an utmost priority for homeland security and a basic signal that we understand water as a basic necessity of all life. After all the purpose of the Clean Water Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.
Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless.
The recent hearings over the future of NWP 21 have been met with obnoxious, freedom of speech impeding busloads of miners paid by their companies to raise raucous, prevent citizens from entering the hearings, and screaming and jeering nonstop so public recorders can't hear citizens concerns about this permitting process, which then never make the record. Luckily many people submit comments via the internet or paper. Elderly women have been threatened and have had to be escorted back to their vehicles by security. It is childish, irresponsible, crazed behavior and will more than likely only intensify as this growing momentum builds against mountaintop removal coal mining. The miners are being force fed their jobs are at stake by their higher ups.
You can frame a picture a certain way, it doesn't mean its accurate or straight. Don Blankenship, famed mortician, actor, and CEO of Massey Energy is up to his normal tomfoolery and outright ethical debauchery. I'm reminded of Vivian Stockman's eloquent words comparing his company to a sociopath under the idea of a corporation being an entity, and any entity is going to have personality, however exciting, dull, or crazy and demented it is. It was at a hearing a few years ago inside the gym at Marsh Fork Elementary about another coal silo being constructed next to the school.
I have seen enough to know
That I have seen too much
Excuse me mister
Can’t you see the children dying?
You say that you can’t help them
Mister you’re not even trying…
~Ben Harper
Don Blankenship never ceases to amaze. Nor does irony. Don recently wrote a letter about China's environmental standards, making a methodical mention of children and how important it is to protect our children. He used the word children eight times in the article. Other than reaffirming everyone's worries about his concern for children, he also makes it clear that global warming is a theory, development takes precedent over environment, and he is against lax safeguards that allow heavy metals and toxic materials to leach into our intake stream. How interesting.
Maybe Don had a change of face, and maybe he will use some of his land to put up a new Marsh Fork Elementary on, or at least let them use some of his equipment to prep the site. But I do find it odd how he seems so concerned about children's safety after his blatant disregard during the on going years of talk, trouble, and sickness occurring at Marsh Fork Elementary in Sundial, WV. And just his general accounting mindset when it comes to profit margins dictating his actions when it comes to topics like sludge injections, blasting near communities, and all the other social issues related to mountaintop removal coal mining and other forms of strip mining.
“If we fail as parents, we have failed as Americans. We have failed as Americans. If we don't all stand up and take part in what’s happening in our Appalachia Mountains, we're all gonna’ suffer from this.”
"You can do without light. You can't do without that Water."
Ed Wiley’s wise words come in waves when I think about Marsh Fork and MTR.
Senator Byrd is getting more involved. He knows of the recent announcement from the Obama Administration that is planning to increase federal oversight of mining operations. He's ready to get involved. And he knows about one nasty evil of MTR very well, Marsh Fork Elementary. And it seems the School Board is Finally calling out for funds to move the kids away from being directly under 2.8 billion gallons of sludge and a coal processing plant.
photo taken from ilovemountains.org
It is still unknown whether funding will be granted to move the school, but there is a chance. Concerned citizens have been raising awareness about this issue and raising money themselves for years now. For a little background, here’s an old article I wrote during Ed Wiley’s walk from Gov. Manchin's place in Charleston, WV to Senator Byrd's office in DC, arriving the same time as an unveiling of ilovemountains.org, a great website of info and knowledge, as well as the beginning campaign of the Clean Water Protection Act, part of Lobby Week which will be happening again pretty soon.
There's a great 23 minute video about Ed's walk to Byrd's office (via the concerned citizens link). These ripples and the ripples of others took awhile, but they finally caught up. Ed is one great stand-up guy, and I'm proud to know him for the good he's brought those kids, inspired by his own granddaughter.
Yet the EPA who just released an 'environmental justice showcase' of 10 communities didn't include one community in the whole of Appalachia.
Don Blankenship has been preemptively letting us know about lay offs, blaming environmentalists, Democrats, and possibly even the bad advice of his Vedic astrologer. It's pretty low when you want to keep your profit margins at a certain level and can do it by laying off workers but you want to dig that line in the sand a little deeper by giving false motives for firing workers. He tells shareholders one thing about the security of his company, permits, and jobs, and tells his workers another.
Lamentations 3: 47-48 Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
So, about all of this wealth, all these jobs the mining industry is proclaiming it creates. Why are the mining regions some of the poorest in the southeast and nation, why is unemployment higher than the national average? All the money leaves with the coal, going to the big wigs and shareholders, doing very little to nothing for local economies. At least very little to nothing positive for local economies.
You lose the things you love and you learn how important things are, you learn how to miss them. You learn what matters.
The recent secret meeting between Gov. Manchin, Blankenship, and a few other big players in the coal industry including a couple representatives show they are ready to get their 2 cents in as far as what's going on behind the scenes and they're also confused and concerned over what will be unfolding about the future of coal mining regulations.
Hm, we've got some serious mid and long term regional planning issues that are going to be one long row to how. Logistical nightmares that we better start planning and strategizing for, for homeland security, happiness, general well-being, health, sanity, and let us not forget that evasive integral factor and motivation, common sense.
Yes, it's long been said the creed is greed and we know short term profits have been governing the Big decisions for awhile, but its time for a new way of thinking and we no longer have the luxury of our inaction and the buffering capacity of time to hold the blinders of the results of our actions and means of existing, i.e. energy. We know too much to do so little. Why are all these little pieces of the puzzle not being connected? Why can we see the trees but not the forest, or the mountainside? It's time to batten the hatch and really get to the heart of this bugger. But for that we're going to have to go deep and deep and deeper still.
These are some serious questions, with even more serious implications. Amplification and bifurcation points tumult us. The ripples grow and its about time to start some more positive waves. The family friendly, PG type. None of this cheap, horrific gratuitous rape and assault and defecation we're used to. No, the future ain't what it used to be, but its still what we make it.
"I know the pieces fit, I watched them fall away." ~ Maynard James Keenan
The dots are just not connecting or adding up in our decision making process and policy. Detachment is a bad thing, at least in re our detachment from reality, ourselves, and the Earth and it is prohibiting and inhibiting many of us to connect the strings. The web of life is torn and fettered, and we have to repair it.
I'd say we were doomed if it wasn't for that one monkey wrench in the human spirit, our stubborn ingenuity, our inability to accept certain things, inalienable rights, our drive when pushed into the corner, our will to survive. I'm hungry for that ingenuity. Salivating at the mouth like one of Pavlov's dogs sitting in the middle of a glorious and repugnant minefield. What will it take for our communities to unite and rise together for freedom from the oppressive and self-mutilating chains of our own poor energy policy?
There is something happening here, and what it is, isn't all too clear. But things are moving, the wheels are in motion, we are left to ask to what end? By what means? At the moment there's so much going on about climate change and one example of point source climate change, MTR. I am thankful for that, the fact we're discussing such relevant prevalent issues.
But the distance between discussion and implementation is what concerns me. Real implementation too, not these gumming whores having no teeth. Just awful. Perhaps the hammer is finally dropping. I surely hope so, for our sake and for the kids. it's always been about the kids. No one deserves someone else’s mess, especially this kind of king hell brain buster.
Some people tell me I live in the woods too much, 'what would you know of what's really going on, in the real world.' I guess this is true, to some extent, but I do have an idea, which isn't too much less than what anyone has, and probably more than some. I enjoy the facts, but it is what or how I feel inside that I try to listen to. What feels right?
It’s harder and harder to give into these atavistic endeavors today. We, the intelligent animal, have become so brain, or pleasure center, oriented we allow little room for intuition, let alone the strange vibrations of our souls. How does all this have anything to do with the climate and mountains. It's a surefire nasty slobber knocker Catch 22. One, our detachment, and two, our need for reattachment to nature amidst the ever pressing sprawl of us, urbanization, commercialization, indoctrination, and of course, electron elation. We've got to overhaul our ways of thinking about energy, from the cradle to the grave, if we want to continue to prosper and live merrily into this new century.
William Arthur Ward once said the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails.
As we adjust inside this new millennium it’s clear some creatures aren't meant to survive, and MTR is surely one of those beasts.
>photo from www.ohvec.org, the best source for daily MTR related news
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I fall to the Earth (another tribute to Autumn)
I fall to the Earth
To decay with the leaves
We are reborn every season
In some rhyme or reason
This is no longer me
Everything breaks down
All revealed
Into the flowing mosaic of nature’s
Constant change
Torn apart in the wind as crispy leaves
Is clarity always found in rebirth?
If your lucky
Harvest moon slides across
Its low and slow elliptical
And I can feel it’s pull
As I fall to the Earth
This is no longer me.
Sit still, you can feel the cells switch
The change
Look in
This new ride in this new organic doll
Is about to begin
A new war of duality
Because its always winter
Before the blooms of spring
Though our springs still flow
Year round
The replenishing release of Autumn
Seeps succulent serenity
In the harmony of balance
And the grace of rapture
I shall be released
Yes a part of me falls to the Earth
As a part of us all
For we are one
And I am no longer me
As everything shines anew
Old seasons of exuviae disappear
Into the breathing mosaic
Stretch and unfold upon awakening
To your life afresh.
To decay with the leaves
We are reborn every season
In some rhyme or reason
This is no longer me
Everything breaks down
All revealed
Into the flowing mosaic of nature’s
Constant change
Torn apart in the wind as crispy leaves
Is clarity always found in rebirth?
If your lucky
Harvest moon slides across
Its low and slow elliptical
And I can feel it’s pull
As I fall to the Earth
This is no longer me.
Sit still, you can feel the cells switch
The change
Look in
This new ride in this new organic doll
Is about to begin
A new war of duality
Because its always winter
Before the blooms of spring
Though our springs still flow
Year round
The replenishing release of Autumn
Seeps succulent serenity
In the harmony of balance
And the grace of rapture
I shall be released
Yes a part of me falls to the Earth
As a part of us all
For we are one
And I am no longer me
As everything shines anew
Old seasons of exuviae disappear
Into the breathing mosaic
Stretch and unfold upon awakening
To your life afresh.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
i see abundantly
The streams of my eyes
Connect me to the longitudes of silence
Just underneath where terra firma stretches out
So gentle in harmonious ever changing free flowing existence
I fall helpless, speechless
Transfixed
To the sound of water splashing
Lapping up the rocks
Awestruck as a child inside mountains of passion
I feed from this living dream
How is this possible?
As everything fades away
To the stirring of my soul slowly
Spun to the sanctuary of our headwaters
Loneliness leaves
Consumed by caressing hands
My lamenting heart dies
This is the blood of beauty entering my vessel
As angels enter clouds
Aches ooze away downstream
Giving in to gravity
Exaltation floods through
The thrush sings praises
The breeze kisses the trees
And we all shudder softly and smile
Our unity of splendor vibrantly vibrates
As we grow together
I see abundantly
This grandeur painting the spectrum of senses
Bathing in the presence of rapturous, thriving, pulsing rhythms
This is the dance of creation
The artistry of fractal delight
I fall helpless, speechless
Transfixed
To the glorious beating, pumping
Flowing force that is our overlooked home
Our house in the stars
Our womb of wonderment
Our fruitful and fragile spinning craft.
Connect me to the longitudes of silence
Just underneath where terra firma stretches out
So gentle in harmonious ever changing free flowing existence
I fall helpless, speechless
Transfixed
To the sound of water splashing
Lapping up the rocks
Awestruck as a child inside mountains of passion
I feed from this living dream
How is this possible?
As everything fades away
To the stirring of my soul slowly
Spun to the sanctuary of our headwaters
Loneliness leaves
Consumed by caressing hands
My lamenting heart dies
This is the blood of beauty entering my vessel
As angels enter clouds
Aches ooze away downstream
Giving in to gravity
Exaltation floods through
The thrush sings praises
The breeze kisses the trees
And we all shudder softly and smile
Our unity of splendor vibrantly vibrates
As we grow together
I see abundantly
This grandeur painting the spectrum of senses
Bathing in the presence of rapturous, thriving, pulsing rhythms
This is the dance of creation
The artistry of fractal delight
I fall helpless, speechless
Transfixed
To the glorious beating, pumping
Flowing force that is our overlooked home
Our house in the stars
Our womb of wonderment
Our fruitful and fragile spinning craft.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Walk in the Woods and Unexpected Encounters
One of the great things about the Appalachian Trail, and hiking or spending time in the woods in general, is you never know what you will see or encounter on any given day. A section of trail or woods you've walked dozens of times can unveil a new epiphany, give you a new experience, help you reconnect in a different way, or show you another layer of the complex ecosystem. And this morning was one of these times for me.
I was descending Kelly's Knob outside Blacksburg, Va on this cool morning after a night flying through the Leonid meteor shower, the fog hanging low, dropping raindrops sporadically but by no means sprinkling. It's just being in the clouds, the nature of that zone. And I was shown an impact of humans in and around the AT. I was startled originally, seeing this large animal suddenly a few feet from me. I jerked to the side without thinking. Was it wounded, sick, old? It was a good sized female coyote, Canis latrans, and she had been shot. I didn't discover that until later upon turning her over, the bullet not exiting. I just starred at the canine beast that could easily pass for a dog, it's Latin name meaning barking dog, though its tail looked more like a fox or squirrel's with it's bushy poofiness. One eye open, teeth barely visible, laying on her side.
Coyotes are killed in high numbers every year. I think hunting is a good thing, part of our historical culture, part of who we are, a easy way to dissuade supporting industrial agriculture for omnivore's, and if you're going to eat meat why not get to know the true source, cost, and experience of earning your supper. I think every omnivore should gut an animal.
I know a lot of hunters who are true conservationists, at times more so than hippies and random sorts of folk associated with 'green living.' But I cannot stand irresponsible hunters, shooting whatever, leaving whatever. Coyotes are legal to shoot, a strange misguided fear picked up from wolves after we trapped, poisoned, and killed most of them. They are part of the symbol of the untamed wild we wanted to extinguish in our earlier American history. If that idea interests you, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America is a sad and interesting read.
Coyotes serve no real threat to humans, a handful of people being attacked over the years, normally after they get acclimated to people feeding them. Yes they do attack sheep and other livestock occasionally, but nothing like the fear many believe. I understand if a small farmer has coyotes preying on his or her livestock, it is an issue of 'survival' in today's terms, and the 'problem' may need to be dealt with in a controlled manner, but killing them out of shear paranoia of what could be is hardly justifiable to put a death warrant on the species.
Coyotes play a valuable role in the natural ecosystem. It's long been known, but misinformation and misplaced fear are prevalent and big components of today's society.
Coyotes are fascinating animals, living in packs and surviving by more solitary means at times. Their numbers grow against eradication efforts in some areas. They have even been known to hunt with a badger, a strange symbiotic relationship that further proves nature never ceases to amaze.
I stare at this dead coyote, imagining her life up here on the mountain, raising and feeding her pups, keeping smaller mammal and rodent populations healthy and in check, eating other small animals when times are tough, adaptability an important trait of the American jackal. Now when I flip her over and her innards move out of the gunshot hole, I hear agitated bugs whirring about inside her, decomposition has begun. It's been less than a day, the cold weather keeping her secret from the turkey buzzards for now, but the bugs begin quickly. She is returning to the food web, but perhaps earlier than she should have.
Maybe I just have a soft spot for coyotes and wolves, I too enjoy howling at the moon for some primordial reason.
I see a fire gone in her eyes and it saddens me somewhat, angers me slightly, and confuses me at how hard it is to conceptualize the motivations of humans at times. Hunting season is in full effect, and I hope hunters of today will continue a tradition, at least in some necks of the woods, to be responsible, smart hunters and not trigger happy kill freaks. It reaches some dark seeded push in us to control everything, to dominate and destroy, but it's not necessary, beneficial, wise, or even owning a grain of common sense. You never know what you'll end up seeing and thinking about when you walk in the woods, and this is where today brought me. The possibilities are endless. Some Native Americans believe the coyote will be the last animal alive on Earth. It makes one wonder.
I was descending Kelly's Knob outside Blacksburg, Va on this cool morning after a night flying through the Leonid meteor shower, the fog hanging low, dropping raindrops sporadically but by no means sprinkling. It's just being in the clouds, the nature of that zone. And I was shown an impact of humans in and around the AT. I was startled originally, seeing this large animal suddenly a few feet from me. I jerked to the side without thinking. Was it wounded, sick, old? It was a good sized female coyote, Canis latrans, and she had been shot. I didn't discover that until later upon turning her over, the bullet not exiting. I just starred at the canine beast that could easily pass for a dog, it's Latin name meaning barking dog, though its tail looked more like a fox or squirrel's with it's bushy poofiness. One eye open, teeth barely visible, laying on her side.
Coyotes are killed in high numbers every year. I think hunting is a good thing, part of our historical culture, part of who we are, a easy way to dissuade supporting industrial agriculture for omnivore's, and if you're going to eat meat why not get to know the true source, cost, and experience of earning your supper. I think every omnivore should gut an animal.
I know a lot of hunters who are true conservationists, at times more so than hippies and random sorts of folk associated with 'green living.' But I cannot stand irresponsible hunters, shooting whatever, leaving whatever. Coyotes are legal to shoot, a strange misguided fear picked up from wolves after we trapped, poisoned, and killed most of them. They are part of the symbol of the untamed wild we wanted to extinguish in our earlier American history. If that idea interests you, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America is a sad and interesting read.
Coyotes serve no real threat to humans, a handful of people being attacked over the years, normally after they get acclimated to people feeding them. Yes they do attack sheep and other livestock occasionally, but nothing like the fear many believe. I understand if a small farmer has coyotes preying on his or her livestock, it is an issue of 'survival' in today's terms, and the 'problem' may need to be dealt with in a controlled manner, but killing them out of shear paranoia of what could be is hardly justifiable to put a death warrant on the species.
Coyotes play a valuable role in the natural ecosystem. It's long been known, but misinformation and misplaced fear are prevalent and big components of today's society.
Coyotes are fascinating animals, living in packs and surviving by more solitary means at times. Their numbers grow against eradication efforts in some areas. They have even been known to hunt with a badger, a strange symbiotic relationship that further proves nature never ceases to amaze.
I stare at this dead coyote, imagining her life up here on the mountain, raising and feeding her pups, keeping smaller mammal and rodent populations healthy and in check, eating other small animals when times are tough, adaptability an important trait of the American jackal. Now when I flip her over and her innards move out of the gunshot hole, I hear agitated bugs whirring about inside her, decomposition has begun. It's been less than a day, the cold weather keeping her secret from the turkey buzzards for now, but the bugs begin quickly. She is returning to the food web, but perhaps earlier than she should have.
Maybe I just have a soft spot for coyotes and wolves, I too enjoy howling at the moon for some primordial reason.
I see a fire gone in her eyes and it saddens me somewhat, angers me slightly, and confuses me at how hard it is to conceptualize the motivations of humans at times. Hunting season is in full effect, and I hope hunters of today will continue a tradition, at least in some necks of the woods, to be responsible, smart hunters and not trigger happy kill freaks. It reaches some dark seeded push in us to control everything, to dominate and destroy, but it's not necessary, beneficial, wise, or even owning a grain of common sense. You never know what you'll end up seeing and thinking about when you walk in the woods, and this is where today brought me. The possibilities are endless. Some Native Americans believe the coyote will be the last animal alive on Earth. It makes one wonder.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Photo of the Day
Wise words up at the Blackburn center.
It's about time to take a walk in the woods. Join the Journey.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
tribute to autumn
Like pastel dreams, this corner of the lake pops out, mountainside of cream and peach, cinnamon and silver, light green and magenta. Most sits green, yellow, red, and mosaics of them all, but a few swaths of wetland edge hold this array of soft pastel colors I get lost in, starring with dreamy eyes like a captured child, caught in this moment I do not want to pass. Swirling wetland chemistry conjures up a stew of visual sorcery. I sit with chin on my knees daydreaming into the colors, wandering about the little things that become everything as the mind hones in like a cat on the hunt. The colors move me, paint over me, fill me with something different, something I cannot explain. These leaves of Autumn hang onto their branches for just a little more, awaiting the gust that will send them spiraling and fluttering and twisting down into the water and ground to replenish the Earth for next year’s revival. What a way to go as I bask in the show as the true colors are revealed for that fleeting time. Such glorious colors abound my heart beats in rapturous commotion trying to take it all in. The birds awaken, stretching and singing as the forest comes alive and I smile as a yellow maple leaf twirls past my face to its new resting place where recycling begins.
The crispness tells me to get ready, the brisk air stinging bronchioles enlivens me. I am enriched by this mosaic and thankful for its grace, grandeur, and asymmetry. It recycles me, this cyclic nature of nature and the seasons. A time to give thanks, a time of bounty, a time to appreciate before we prepare for the hardships of the upcoming winter. A time to count our blessings, smile upon our neighbor, enjoy the ending harvest, and begin to plan for what awaits ahead just around the next bend inside the next chapter of our lives. A time to grow and see renewed life out of each small death.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Photos of the Day - Autumn moves
Good ole Autumn, the time of reflection. Nature's mosaic sure does make me happy. Some pictures as of late. Unfortunately no pictures of our work at Bear Mountain, I was scared to take my camera out there.
morning drive up to Bear Mountain
The Harvest moon setting as the sun rises
Beautiful edge
nature's colors
walk to an adjacent lake
Autumn moves and shudders (moved camera w/ shutter open, fun shot, no editing)
arched tunnel for our canoe and perch for the kingfisher
pastel dreams wave across me
Monday, September 28, 2009
story of a tree
I once told someone
A tree told a story to me
And how it grew and grew and grew on me
And he just laughed and walked away
So I told someone else
And she smiled and said okay
But she didn’t believe
I could see it in her eyes
And at the end
I asked if she got the point
The tree was trying to make
But she only said I had self esteem
Problems voicing my inadequacies through
Inanimate objects
Oh, the tree was very animated I retorted
Perhaps you study too much psychology
And too little of life
So she scoffed and walked off
I told it to others
The story of the tree
And how it beat and beat and beat on me
Some waited for a punch line
That never came
And it always hit too close to home
Some said the tree was naïve
One even said he wondered what
It’d say when the chainsaw started
“I bet that’d change its tune”
I bet it would, I said
But he didn’t get the joke
One old lady said, Honey, you need help
And even if that be so, it wouldn’t
Change the story of the tree
And how it cut and cut and cut into me
Or what that story has meant to me
By the end of the day I felt worn
And beat, slightly downtrodden
And meek
And I sat on the sidewalk
And blinked
And blinked
And blinked
And a big eyed boy approached me
Asking what was wrong
Said I looked like his father after a sad, sad song
So I said I had a story to tell
And told it to that child
And at the end asked if he understood
And he said yes, and I smiled
But I wonder if you do?
picture by Ted Martello
A tree told a story to me
And how it grew and grew and grew on me
And he just laughed and walked away
So I told someone else
And she smiled and said okay
But she didn’t believe
I could see it in her eyes
And at the end
I asked if she got the point
The tree was trying to make
But she only said I had self esteem
Problems voicing my inadequacies through
Inanimate objects
Oh, the tree was very animated I retorted
Perhaps you study too much psychology
And too little of life
So she scoffed and walked off
I told it to others
The story of the tree
And how it beat and beat and beat on me
Some waited for a punch line
That never came
And it always hit too close to home
Some said the tree was naïve
One even said he wondered what
It’d say when the chainsaw started
“I bet that’d change its tune”
I bet it would, I said
But he didn’t get the joke
One old lady said, Honey, you need help
And even if that be so, it wouldn’t
Change the story of the tree
And how it cut and cut and cut into me
Or what that story has meant to me
By the end of the day I felt worn
And beat, slightly downtrodden
And meek
And I sat on the sidewalk
And blinked
And blinked
And blinked
And a big eyed boy approached me
Asking what was wrong
Said I looked like his father after a sad, sad song
So I said I had a story to tell
And told it to that child
And at the end asked if he understood
And he said yes, and I smiled
But I wonder if you do?
picture by Ted Martello
Monday, September 21, 2009
I fade into the night
I fade into the night with
Nina Simone spinning smooth like honey
disappearing into lucidity
I never cared for the word dreams
for dreams are quite different
than what comes at night
flowing out into all
this lucidity gives liberty
to what awaits
tomorrow is only a dream away.
Nina Simone spinning smooth like honey
disappearing into lucidity
I never cared for the word dreams
for dreams are quite different
than what comes at night
flowing out into all
this lucidity gives liberty
to what awaits
tomorrow is only a dream away.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
a brief encounter
I met an old woman down by a stream the other day
I was just sitting there
Watching herons hunt
And dragonflies dangle above the vegetation
Flying unions making hearts and wheels
Implanting the next generation in hidden places
and pondering the sexy sleek packaging of an egg
She said she noticed me a ways upstream
And I asked what on earth did she mean
But she just shook her head, smiled, and sat down
The brevity of her gravity shook me
But I paid it no mind
She wore fanciful stones and bare feet
Had the air of regal and aura of the wise
And she sort of looked into you with bent head
In a way that made me feel naked
Pierced by amethyst eyes
But I didn’t particularly mind
Her hair hung in bouncing curls that caressed the wind like feathers
I told her her fourth chakra contrasted the dangling amulet
And she laughed, touching it to her heart
What would you know of such things young boy?
But I just smiled
And asked what she thought of synchronicity
It has its benefits, markers to live and celebrate by
And of course we all know what happens
While celestial bodies dance
Coincidences are rather foolish and lazy logic if you ask me
Made for minds too bored to think
Magnetism is much too strong
And I must confess
She laid back on the grass and moss
And the flora seemed to wrap and caress
While she giggled and smiled
I was beginning to think
I was in a strange dream
She felt my unease
And told me I needn't be rash
Time is a flower and we’re about to bloom
And you are a little bee pollinating the temporal
Creating new chances
And spirals dancing off the stamens of possibility
She started crying
A mixture of sanguine, sadness, and crazed eyes
She said it was just her way
Of communicating with old friends
That could no longer voice language
And the ground softened
As a soft wave
But this was no pocosin
She told me to lay in her tears
And sleep for awhile
And when she started singing
My eyes couldn’t argue
And I found peace on the ground
Sinking slightly and smiling wide
As the dream world washed over me
Into fantastic visions and storm
Swimming arcs of light and energy
Tiptoeing lucidity I was on the edge
But something was different
And any control was gone
So I just rode down the stream
Letting it tell me it’s story
Like an allegory with too hidden a meaning
I felt sort of lost
And this stream was going in circles
Never reaching the sea
Never reaching me
I awoke around dusk
To sweet evening hues and long soft light
I knew she was gone before I even looked
If she had ever been there at all
Nothing left but I in wet ground
But everywhere was wet as a shower had come and passed while I dreamed
And the stream of my dream splashed upon me
Iris and ivy grew all around
And sycamores stretch towards the flow
I thought about that woman all night long
And the words she sung as I drifted off:
Yon lies archaic ruins
Lost to the vines of time
Yon lies the waxing moon
Full of strength and sublime
The morning star shines
To the east
To the east
Guiding us to grace
Enlightened feast
Swim in my waters
Swim in my halcyon nest
Feed from the forest
Feed from my breast
Yon lies tomorrow
Yon lies the past
Yon lies opportunity
So infinite and vast.
And sometimes I sing this song along riversides
When kingfishers chatter and fly by
And sometimes I think I can hear her sing with me
Softly somewhere next to the horizon
And I dance with the trees as I sing
And swoop and bring my arms like wings
Soaring, soaring to hidden heights
Hoping and knowing somewhere she is in my sight
She is everywhere
Like my fluttering heart beating out for understanding and relief.
I was just sitting there
Watching herons hunt
And dragonflies dangle above the vegetation
Flying unions making hearts and wheels
Implanting the next generation in hidden places
and pondering the sexy sleek packaging of an egg
She said she noticed me a ways upstream
And I asked what on earth did she mean
But she just shook her head, smiled, and sat down
The brevity of her gravity shook me
But I paid it no mind
She wore fanciful stones and bare feet
Had the air of regal and aura of the wise
And she sort of looked into you with bent head
In a way that made me feel naked
Pierced by amethyst eyes
But I didn’t particularly mind
Her hair hung in bouncing curls that caressed the wind like feathers
I told her her fourth chakra contrasted the dangling amulet
And she laughed, touching it to her heart
What would you know of such things young boy?
But I just smiled
And asked what she thought of synchronicity
It has its benefits, markers to live and celebrate by
And of course we all know what happens
While celestial bodies dance
Coincidences are rather foolish and lazy logic if you ask me
Made for minds too bored to think
Magnetism is much too strong
And I must confess
She laid back on the grass and moss
And the flora seemed to wrap and caress
While she giggled and smiled
I was beginning to think
I was in a strange dream
She felt my unease
And told me I needn't be rash
Time is a flower and we’re about to bloom
And you are a little bee pollinating the temporal
Creating new chances
And spirals dancing off the stamens of possibility
She started crying
A mixture of sanguine, sadness, and crazed eyes
She said it was just her way
Of communicating with old friends
That could no longer voice language
And the ground softened
As a soft wave
But this was no pocosin
She told me to lay in her tears
And sleep for awhile
And when she started singing
My eyes couldn’t argue
And I found peace on the ground
Sinking slightly and smiling wide
As the dream world washed over me
Into fantastic visions and storm
Swimming arcs of light and energy
Tiptoeing lucidity I was on the edge
But something was different
And any control was gone
So I just rode down the stream
Letting it tell me it’s story
Like an allegory with too hidden a meaning
I felt sort of lost
And this stream was going in circles
Never reaching the sea
Never reaching me
I awoke around dusk
To sweet evening hues and long soft light
I knew she was gone before I even looked
If she had ever been there at all
Nothing left but I in wet ground
But everywhere was wet as a shower had come and passed while I dreamed
And the stream of my dream splashed upon me
Iris and ivy grew all around
And sycamores stretch towards the flow
I thought about that woman all night long
And the words she sung as I drifted off:
Yon lies archaic ruins
Lost to the vines of time
Yon lies the waxing moon
Full of strength and sublime
The morning star shines
To the east
To the east
Guiding us to grace
Enlightened feast
Swim in my waters
Swim in my halcyon nest
Feed from the forest
Feed from my breast
Yon lies tomorrow
Yon lies the past
Yon lies opportunity
So infinite and vast.
And sometimes I sing this song along riversides
When kingfishers chatter and fly by
And sometimes I think I can hear her sing with me
Softly somewhere next to the horizon
And I dance with the trees as I sing
And swoop and bring my arms like wings
Soaring, soaring to hidden heights
Hoping and knowing somewhere she is in my sight
She is everywhere
Like my fluttering heart beating out for understanding and relief.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
the puddle stirs like galaxy flushing away
One day I sat next to a puddle
Slowing stirring it with a stick
Making spirals of water with
Chasing sediment
Swirls upon swirls
And things got cloudy
And changed
Before everything settled
And became clear again
And I wonder
If God and Gaia and evolution
From time to time
Sometimes remind us
To stir things up
Cause commotion
Cause motion and mix things up
Conjuring change
Recreating new equilibriums
It isn’t survival of the fittest
Or the wittiest
I speak of the needed chaos and dreams
To reestablish a more complete
And profound order
Written by the blemishes of the moon
Felt like brail by momentary prophets
One day I sat next to a puddle
And watched the whirlpools dwindle and settle
And saw the beauty
Of stirring things up
And the clarity refound
Looked clearer than ever
As reflection returned
And I could see what I was looking at
Because it was really just me that was being stirred
And it took the stirring dirt to show me
What we stir on the outside
We stir on the in.
Slowing stirring it with a stick
Making spirals of water with
Chasing sediment
Swirls upon swirls
And things got cloudy
And changed
Before everything settled
And became clear again
And I wonder
If God and Gaia and evolution
From time to time
Sometimes remind us
To stir things up
Cause commotion
Cause motion and mix things up
Conjuring change
Recreating new equilibriums
It isn’t survival of the fittest
Or the wittiest
I speak of the needed chaos and dreams
To reestablish a more complete
And profound order
Written by the blemishes of the moon
Felt like brail by momentary prophets
One day I sat next to a puddle
And watched the whirlpools dwindle and settle
And saw the beauty
Of stirring things up
And the clarity refound
Looked clearer than ever
As reflection returned
And I could see what I was looking at
Because it was really just me that was being stirred
And it took the stirring dirt to show me
What we stir on the outside
We stir on the in.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
all waits for release
The fire burns time away
As the smoke billows
Leaving ash of the seconds gone
Eaten by the ravenous
Insatiable movement that
Can never cease
Always forward
Sometimes upward
The heat how it spreads
Like memories
Like emotion pouring over the
Sky that is you and I
We can never cease to be
Only cease to hold this physical body
Before we too are released
As smoke for ashes, returning to the light
For we are all candles of God
Candles of Creation, slowly returning home
To again melt into the
Eternal flame that is all
Feel it inside your bones
The yearning to return
The campfire shows us the way
Inside its happiness of energy release
Caressing our faces with warmth
The stars shine down in cosmic
Circles, revolving around one
As we all revolve around the Sun
That blazing candle that will
Envelope all in due time
We are expanding
We are nearing nirvana
We are birds in a tornado
We are marching on precious stones
These mountains rise to the clouds
While leaves bow to the glowing orb
All waits for release, all is already there.
As the smoke billows
Leaving ash of the seconds gone
Eaten by the ravenous
Insatiable movement that
Can never cease
Always forward
Sometimes upward
The heat how it spreads
Like memories
Like emotion pouring over the
Sky that is you and I
We can never cease to be
Only cease to hold this physical body
Before we too are released
As smoke for ashes, returning to the light
For we are all candles of God
Candles of Creation, slowly returning home
To again melt into the
Eternal flame that is all
Feel it inside your bones
The yearning to return
The campfire shows us the way
Inside its happiness of energy release
Caressing our faces with warmth
The stars shine down in cosmic
Circles, revolving around one
As we all revolve around the Sun
That blazing candle that will
Envelope all in due time
We are expanding
We are nearing nirvana
We are birds in a tornado
We are marching on precious stones
These mountains rise to the clouds
While leaves bow to the glowing orb
All waits for release, all is already there.
Farewell for now Highlands
It is about time to leave my beloved commonwealth for awhile, so I say goodbye to the highlands of Virginia for a couple months as I move north to continue working on our Appalachian Trail from the top of Virginia all the way up to the top of New York. Looking forward to a few days back home in the pastoral Piedmont before departing.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Committment and Remorse, what does the mirror of this media fire glow against you and I?
I stay away from sports normally, leaving that sort of talk to the professionals and analysts, but I couldn't resist this one, whether people agree or not. I hear there's a lot of negative feedback about Michael Vick's reinstatement in the NFL, and I know a lot of folk just don't care but I think its a pretty interesting cookie to crumble.
"If I can help more animals than I've hurt, then I'm doing my part," solemn words from the once lackadaisical yet bursting quarterback. Granted it took a swift kick in reality to get him there, I know what he says is true now. I think his situation is going to be a great educational tool raising awareness on a few fronts.
Since I'm at a beach house I have the unusual luxury of having cable, and my friend put Dirty Jobs on, where they are at some factory where 80,000 chickens were hatched the day of the recording, and now they're separating male and female. Hatchlings don't need food or water for 72 hours so they can be shipped all over the US stuffed in boxes, 'no problem,' as the guy teaches us.
The manufacturing and processing of animals for consumption on industrial magnitudes is degrading to the land, the water, and our own morals. I feel no qualm with eating meat, though I choose to only sink my teeth into flesh when I know where it comes from, like where the hunter killed it. Industrial sized factory farming is quite the nasty scene, demolishing small farms, unethical and cruel. Lets get it straight I don't condone his past actions and I love dogs as much as anyone and will show no shame in kissing and hugging and playing with our canine pals. I love all animals.
I wonder how many chicken, pig, cow, and soon to be tender veal calf are killed after living lives of overcrowded cages being pumped with antibiotics and hormones because there diet is unnatural and they're stuck wallowing in the mire of their own excrement. I understand dog fighting is different, but at the same time, it's really not so different, they're both disturbing.
It's a perception issue, a cultural thing. So many have dogs they love, it makes the abuse of a dog seem so evil, but McDonald's is making millions. It's a different connection. They say pigs are smarter than dogs but a lot of the same people hating on Vick have cholesterol issues from pork. So enough on all that, but anyone hating on Michael Vick should take a good hard look in the mirror because you know what the good book says, "Judge not lest you want to be judged."
It's plain as day upon hearing Michael talk now that he is remorseful for his actions, humbled by his jail time, and wants to live a better more fulfilling life with his family and friends. And he's one of the most athletic and fun to watch players to ever toss the pigskin. We've got human murderers playing who've gotten more forgiveness than Michael. Practice Christian forgiveness as Coach Tony Dungy explained in the first press conference. So give it up haters, there are more severe atrocities occurring in our atmospheres, and he's going to do more positive good now with his place in sports than many people will ever get a chance to, so let's love our brothers and sisters and as he said, this is the land of second chances, even if you only get one.
Wise words.
I guess I've always been partial to Michael, being a Virginia boy and a Hokie, and since I was able to watch a moment in college football history my freshman year of college at VT, his second and final season. He moved with the grace of someone playing on another level than everybody else around him, knowing how and when to turn it on and hit the angle making it appear he moves at rates unparalleled to his defenders. Anyone who makes something look that easy has got something special.
I'm more interested in underlying sociological and cultural problems of dog fighting than one media induced martyr.
The hardest part for me now is coming to accept the tough reality that I'll have to be an Eagles fan, but a friend already 'welcomed me to the dark side' of obnoxious and raucous fans. I reluctantly join the boat, but I'm just happy to see Michael wearing a jersey back on the gridiron, where he wants to be, where he belongs, making magic out of a savage sport, showing us athletic grace and drive, the ballet of muscle and grit when everybody around you just wants to take you down and knock your block off. Stand strong and steadfast, and good luck Michael.
"If I can help more animals than I've hurt, then I'm doing my part," solemn words from the once lackadaisical yet bursting quarterback. Granted it took a swift kick in reality to get him there, I know what he says is true now. I think his situation is going to be a great educational tool raising awareness on a few fronts.
Since I'm at a beach house I have the unusual luxury of having cable, and my friend put Dirty Jobs on, where they are at some factory where 80,000 chickens were hatched the day of the recording, and now they're separating male and female. Hatchlings don't need food or water for 72 hours so they can be shipped all over the US stuffed in boxes, 'no problem,' as the guy teaches us.
The manufacturing and processing of animals for consumption on industrial magnitudes is degrading to the land, the water, and our own morals. I feel no qualm with eating meat, though I choose to only sink my teeth into flesh when I know where it comes from, like where the hunter killed it. Industrial sized factory farming is quite the nasty scene, demolishing small farms, unethical and cruel. Lets get it straight I don't condone his past actions and I love dogs as much as anyone and will show no shame in kissing and hugging and playing with our canine pals. I love all animals.
I wonder how many chicken, pig, cow, and soon to be tender veal calf are killed after living lives of overcrowded cages being pumped with antibiotics and hormones because there diet is unnatural and they're stuck wallowing in the mire of their own excrement. I understand dog fighting is different, but at the same time, it's really not so different, they're both disturbing.
It's a perception issue, a cultural thing. So many have dogs they love, it makes the abuse of a dog seem so evil, but McDonald's is making millions. It's a different connection. They say pigs are smarter than dogs but a lot of the same people hating on Vick have cholesterol issues from pork. So enough on all that, but anyone hating on Michael Vick should take a good hard look in the mirror because you know what the good book says, "Judge not lest you want to be judged."
It's plain as day upon hearing Michael talk now that he is remorseful for his actions, humbled by his jail time, and wants to live a better more fulfilling life with his family and friends. And he's one of the most athletic and fun to watch players to ever toss the pigskin. We've got human murderers playing who've gotten more forgiveness than Michael. Practice Christian forgiveness as Coach Tony Dungy explained in the first press conference. So give it up haters, there are more severe atrocities occurring in our atmospheres, and he's going to do more positive good now with his place in sports than many people will ever get a chance to, so let's love our brothers and sisters and as he said, this is the land of second chances, even if you only get one.
"I think everybody deserves a second chance. You know, we all have issues, we all deal with certain things, and, you know, we all have our own set of iniquities in our life and I think as long as you're willing to come back and do it the right way, and do the right things and that you're committed, then you deserve it. But you only get one shot at a second chance, and I'm conscious of that."
Wise words.
I guess I've always been partial to Michael, being a Virginia boy and a Hokie, and since I was able to watch a moment in college football history my freshman year of college at VT, his second and final season. He moved with the grace of someone playing on another level than everybody else around him, knowing how and when to turn it on and hit the angle making it appear he moves at rates unparalleled to his defenders. Anyone who makes something look that easy has got something special.
"We all use the excuse it was part of our culture, and I don't think that's an excuse. I was kind of abiding by that rule at the time."
I'm more interested in underlying sociological and cultural problems of dog fighting than one media induced martyr.
The hardest part for me now is coming to accept the tough reality that I'll have to be an Eagles fan, but a friend already 'welcomed me to the dark side' of obnoxious and raucous fans. I reluctantly join the boat, but I'm just happy to see Michael wearing a jersey back on the gridiron, where he wants to be, where he belongs, making magic out of a savage sport, showing us athletic grace and drive, the ballet of muscle and grit when everybody around you just wants to take you down and knock your block off. Stand strong and steadfast, and good luck Michael.
what is this beating?
What is this beating
The constant slow droning
Banging on the door
Rapping upon my vessel
Pumping life and wonder
And of course
Confusion
What is this beating
Tapping my fingers
Begging my eyes
For just a glance
Just a silhouette of a fleeting chance
How it hits
How it rips
Rippling through my insides
These waves pound my thoughts
My dreams, my walks
My life
What is this beating
That just won’t stop
The funny thing
Through all the pain and loneliness and wine and long nights
I don’t want it to
Stop that is
Because it fills me with dreams
And the high notes that become the bookmarks of
This quick transient existence
What is this beating emanating from my heart
How it aches, how it keeps me alive
How it breaks, and dives into the skies
How it allows me to soar
How it throws me to the floor
I love this beating rhythm
That sings with the birds
And shimmers with the celestial canopy
Mimicking the sounds of the seasons
And cycles of the moon
What is this beating but the drive of my life
The music of my soul
The harmony of desire and reality
I cherish it so
The high and the low
The darkness and the glow
That emanate from my pores
Singing aura of constant change
What is this beating but me
Subtle energy of thought becoming action
Seed becomes fruit
My tongue aches for a taste
Bitter or sweet
It reeks of relief
As do we all
Begging for understanding and intrigue
Begging of unknown chances
The drumming of what is yet to come
Eager for existence
That is what it is
Listen inside and become the slow beat
Adjusting to our demand
Becoming our moods
What is this beating
But the song of our life
The question becomes
Do we tap our foot to the rhythm
Or do we dance.
The constant slow droning
Banging on the door
Rapping upon my vessel
Pumping life and wonder
And of course
Confusion
What is this beating
Tapping my fingers
Begging my eyes
For just a glance
Just a silhouette of a fleeting chance
How it hits
How it rips
Rippling through my insides
These waves pound my thoughts
My dreams, my walks
My life
What is this beating
That just won’t stop
The funny thing
Through all the pain and loneliness and wine and long nights
I don’t want it to
Stop that is
Because it fills me with dreams
And the high notes that become the bookmarks of
This quick transient existence
What is this beating emanating from my heart
How it aches, how it keeps me alive
How it breaks, and dives into the skies
How it allows me to soar
How it throws me to the floor
I love this beating rhythm
That sings with the birds
And shimmers with the celestial canopy
Mimicking the sounds of the seasons
And cycles of the moon
What is this beating but the drive of my life
The music of my soul
The harmony of desire and reality
I cherish it so
The high and the low
The darkness and the glow
That emanate from my pores
Singing aura of constant change
What is this beating but me
Subtle energy of thought becoming action
Seed becomes fruit
My tongue aches for a taste
Bitter or sweet
It reeks of relief
As do we all
Begging for understanding and intrigue
Begging of unknown chances
The drumming of what is yet to come
Eager for existence
That is what it is
Listen inside and become the slow beat
Adjusting to our demand
Becoming our moods
What is this beating
But the song of our life
The question becomes
Do we tap our foot to the rhythm
Or do we dance.
i put you to my ear
Dancing in the clouds
Watching the heat lightning
Pulse in fleeting beats
Like fireflies spastically flashing
Dancing in the clouds of my mind
These lights are axons and neurons
Synapses of serenity
Surrounded by thoughts of you
Slow dancing in these clouds
the scales are the same
Billowing in my brain
Echoing in the folds and chasms
These chants stretch
As fires of mass interact
And I can barely make out your silhouette
Painted in moon glow
Painted in passion
I howl with the coyotes in lunacy
Smiling at the soft light
Watching you dancing in the clouds
Of my billowing brain
This lighting strikes so hard
Electrifying my core
Shooting through the shoots and branches
And roots and romances
Of fractal delight forming our shells
I put you to my ear
And hear so much more than the waves.
Watching the heat lightning
Pulse in fleeting beats
Like fireflies spastically flashing
Dancing in the clouds of my mind
These lights are axons and neurons
Synapses of serenity
Surrounded by thoughts of you
Slow dancing in these clouds
the scales are the same
Billowing in my brain
Echoing in the folds and chasms
These chants stretch
As fires of mass interact
And I can barely make out your silhouette
Painted in moon glow
Painted in passion
I howl with the coyotes in lunacy
Smiling at the soft light
Watching you dancing in the clouds
Of my billowing brain
This lighting strikes so hard
Electrifying my core
Shooting through the shoots and branches
And roots and romances
Of fractal delight forming our shells
I put you to my ear
And hear so much more than the waves.
paths guide us
Thunder clap
Spiderwort and dieing trillium
Speckle the way
Giving way
To bursts of color
Flaming azalea
Oranges and yellows like paint drops
Dripping from creativity
And beauty
And survival
Mountain passes
The trail leads us down the path
The path
Enlightenment
Third eye calibration
From the source
Craggy overlooks
Moonset and sunrise
Sunset and moonrise
Swaying valleys show the way
Magnetic forces spin us round
And we hang on with a mixture of fear and delight
That chase each other as the day and night
Emotional landscapes shift like the seasons
And we begin to realize the resemblance
Of what’s on the inside
And what’s on the out.
Spiderwort and dieing trillium
Speckle the way
Giving way
To bursts of color
Flaming azalea
Oranges and yellows like paint drops
Dripping from creativity
And beauty
And survival
Mountain passes
The trail leads us down the path
The path
Enlightenment
Third eye calibration
From the source
Craggy overlooks
Moonset and sunrise
Sunset and moonrise
Swaying valleys show the way
Magnetic forces spin us round
And we hang on with a mixture of fear and delight
That chase each other as the day and night
Emotional landscapes shift like the seasons
And we begin to realize the resemblance
Of what’s on the inside
And what’s on the out.
a cool breeze stirring about
Rising is heaven and good is the world.
Platitudes…soft chuckle
A smooth cool breeze floating by
Curving and wisping
Smiling and rolling on through the mountains
Valleys and streams, rocks and leaves, bow and hold steadfast
All whisper back in recognition
And peace at the sweet passing
The wind whips and tears
At our eyes and hair
Flopping and flowing
Dog ears and dogwood flowers
Wild is the wind
Falling as petals push me over the edge
Drift smells of lavender and lily
Pollen scrambles for awaiting love
You kiss the back of my neck
And I shudder in delight.
Platitudes…soft chuckle
A smooth cool breeze floating by
Curving and wisping
Smiling and rolling on through the mountains
Valleys and streams, rocks and leaves, bow and hold steadfast
All whisper back in recognition
And peace at the sweet passing
The wind whips and tears
At our eyes and hair
Flopping and flowing
Dog ears and dogwood flowers
Wild is the wind
Falling as petals push me over the edge
Drift smells of lavender and lily
Pollen scrambles for awaiting love
You kiss the back of my neck
And I shudder in delight.
rubbin the dew off
Rubbin’ the dew off
Because the night rubs on me
And I don’t mind it as much
If we rub off on each other
As water appears on the grass
We roll around like children
Greeting the sun
But you already brought light
To my eyes
And the fire of desire to my heart
Rubbin’ the dew off
While this heat evaporates
These thoughts
Back into the great aerial ocean
I’m awaiting the vapor to return
Like your eyes upon me.
Because the night rubs on me
And I don’t mind it as much
If we rub off on each other
As water appears on the grass
We roll around like children
Greeting the sun
But you already brought light
To my eyes
And the fire of desire to my heart
Rubbin’ the dew off
While this heat evaporates
These thoughts
Back into the great aerial ocean
I’m awaiting the vapor to return
Like your eyes upon me.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Some Pictures of the Summer
A few pictures as of late...
a timber rattler suns on a nice outcropping. (story about this particular snake coming soon)
the lady herself, the black widow
all legs and eyeballs
roan mountain moonrise
the pastoral childhood. my nephew and dog back home on the farm.
butterflies on milkweed
luna moth photoshoot
a timber rattler suns on a nice outcropping. (story about this particular snake coming soon)
the lady herself, the black widow
all legs and eyeballs
roan mountain moonrise
the pastoral childhood. my nephew and dog back home on the farm.
butterflies on milkweed
luna moth photoshoot
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
mesa luna
Sometimes things seem to happen when we least expect them to, so is life. I think time to time in our lives we wonder if we are on the path we are supposed to be on, if the fates have given up on us or if we have given up on our fate, and sometimes, we get little reminders that things are alright and we are where we are supposed to be at this point, and it happened to me recently. Doubt sprouts in everyone sometimes, its unavoidable, but we keep going, and our path continues to grow and change and return to what will be.
Yes, I am obsessed with the moon and happy to admit it. Some may say it borderlines lunacy. Anything that breaks off from us and stays and spins around us helping stabilize us deserves respect in my book. And its just so dreamy, full of late nights and wandering minds. And on some of those rare sightings when the moon rises and sets it sure does shine rich with color. I happened to stumble upon it setting the other night and had a great little moment.
I had planned to do a vision quest during my 2 week break, but sometimes things don't always go according to plan, and sometimes that's a good thing. While my vision quest got postponed for a little bit i experienced many other realizations.
Mesa luna
dark amber with diffracted sun sap
orange with setting glee
as a shooting star falls above and into the celestial canopy
for a moment arcing down directly through the moon
last sliver disappears into the horizon
What does it all mean?
I just stepped outside to clear my head
I was hardly ready for such grand and raw events
I take it
as I do all falling flaming stars
that happen as I happen to look up
Reaffirmation of the path
a marker for the journey
a compass point to reassure
that we cannot always question
but from time to time must realize
that we are where we are supposed to be
in that quick fleeting moment
in the instant of our existence
that all is okay and while we
may deter
from the spiraling cone
of our lives homeostasis
in this moment
we are home
where we are meant to be in this moment of space and time
of our ever changing ethos
and with that sweet and sharp
caressing peace of mind
we smile and retire
to the sleep of the just
so we can remember our dreams
and fulfill our fates.
Yes, I am obsessed with the moon and happy to admit it. Some may say it borderlines lunacy. Anything that breaks off from us and stays and spins around us helping stabilize us deserves respect in my book. And its just so dreamy, full of late nights and wandering minds. And on some of those rare sightings when the moon rises and sets it sure does shine rich with color. I happened to stumble upon it setting the other night and had a great little moment.
I had planned to do a vision quest during my 2 week break, but sometimes things don't always go according to plan, and sometimes that's a good thing. While my vision quest got postponed for a little bit i experienced many other realizations.
Mesa luna
dark amber with diffracted sun sap
orange with setting glee
as a shooting star falls above and into the celestial canopy
for a moment arcing down directly through the moon
last sliver disappears into the horizon
What does it all mean?
I just stepped outside to clear my head
I was hardly ready for such grand and raw events
I take it
as I do all falling flaming stars
that happen as I happen to look up
Reaffirmation of the path
a marker for the journey
a compass point to reassure
that we cannot always question
but from time to time must realize
that we are where we are supposed to be
in that quick fleeting moment
in the instant of our existence
that all is okay and while we
may deter
from the spiraling cone
of our lives homeostasis
in this moment
we are home
where we are meant to be in this moment of space and time
of our ever changing ethos
and with that sweet and sharp
caressing peace of mind
we smile and retire
to the sleep of the just
so we can remember our dreams
and fulfill our fates.
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