Anxious to Know

(This is an explication I wrote from my Environmental Literature class to a quote from Barry Lopez's article "Rediscovering North America")

“We’re anxious now to know what the land has to say to us, how it responds to our use of it.”

When we are children, if we are lucky, we hear stories about the Native American tribes in North America. If we are even more fortunate, we hear about their lifestyles, beliefs, traditions, and relationships with each other and the land around them. But most of us didn’t, and if we did, we ignored their wisdom for our own western version and quickly forgot the teachings. If, sometime later in our adult life, we hear these stories again, we find ourselves equating them with an idealistic painting of Native America. The image is nice, but we know that our culture is too far gone in a different direction to turn back to an indigenous lifestyle.

But is it?

Barry Lopez, in his essay “Rediscovering North America” makes a brilliant case for the possibility of change in our culture. He acknowledges “one of our deepest frustrations as a culture…must be that we have made so extreme an investment in mining the continent, created such an infrastructure of nearly endless jobs predicated on the removal and distribution of trees, water, minerals, fish, plants, and oil, that we cannot imagine stopping.” It is important to acknowledge this frustration because it means that we are upset. We aren’t happy with our current lifestyle and want to change. Though we don’t necessarily understand how, the desire, yearning, and willingness is with us.

When Lopez writes a few pages earlier “we are anxious now to know what the land has to say to us” he is describing a shift in thought. For several centuries—he places the date at 1492—western culture has viewed the land as a possession. Now we are slowly returning back and taking our thoughts in a different direction of treating the land as companion or person. In his line “we are anxious now to know what the land has to say to us” Lopez also offers a teacher in which we can learn from. Indigenous people often viewed themselves as one with the land. They wouldn’t have thought to distinguish between their bodies and an oak tree near their home or the canyon they hunted in. So when Lopez says that we can listen to the land, he is also suggesting we listen to the indigenous tribes of North America as they can be seen as the same.

Listening will not always be an easy task. We will hear stories that go against beliefs we were raised with and stories that urge us to change lifestyles we have grown accustomed to. And in these stories, we will also hear the truth of our culture and its impact on the earth. The land, the people, will “respond to our uses of it.” It will be difficult to hear, but we can endure its tale. We will listen because we are frustrated and anxious to hear a story other than our own.

I am thankful for:
Chaucer
Earl Gray loose leaf tea
Candles (On Saturday, I was working on the kitchen table, and my mom put three candles by me, lit them, and said I was encircled by light)
O Fortuna
Lady in the Water Sound Track
You
Google chat
Guitar
Music
Writing
These are getting generally more broad
Maps
Barry Lopez.

I have had a wonderful afternoon (I finished writing my Chaucer essay!) and I wanted to share some of the energy.

you do not have to be good

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

"But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world."
-Barry Lopez.

Here it is in context: "The second point I wish to make is that this violence corruption needn't define us. Looking back on the Spanish incursion, we can take the measure of the horror and assert that we will not be bound by it. We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world."

From his essay "The Rediscovery of North America"

For my Environmental Literature and Legislation class we have to research an endangered animal and tomorrow turn in a one page report over its current state. I thought it would be more fun to type it all up in a blog post, so here is what I found:



I've seen West Indian Manatees a few times in the Gulf of Mexico when I visit Florida. Usually they poke up their noses out and flare their nostrils to breathe. Sometimes they are curious and raise their heads from the water. I observed the Manatees from a bridge and didn’t see the full extent of their bodies. West Indian Manatees are large aquatic mammals. On average, they are ten feet in length and can weight between 800 and 1,200 pounds. According to the research I've done and my observations from the bridges in Florida, Manatees are gentle and slow-moving animals. They swim at a pace of three to five miles, but have been known to reach speeds of twenty in short bursts. At their normal pace of three to five miles an hour, they meander through the ocean to graze on their completely vegetarian diet of aquatic plants. West Indian Manatees are herbivorous grazers that consume 15% of their body weight in vegetation daily.

To me, Manatees have very interesting migration patterns. They need warm waters to survive, so in the summer, they can be seen Florida’s rivers and coastal waters. A few have been sighted as far west as Texas and north as Virginia. In the winter, they migrate south and spend November though March primarily in Florida. To quote directly from my research “Water temperatures that fall below 21° C (70° F) cause manatees to move into warm water refuge areas. Scientists don’t know what cues manatees follow, but they seem to know when cold weather is coming and seek warm water areas.”

Manatees live in shallow, slow-moving rivers, bays, estuaries and coastal water ecosystems of the southeastern United States. Often they come into contact with humans. Many photographs show Manatees with deep gashes along their back. These gashes are caused by motorized boat’s propellers. As I mentioned earlier, Manatees swim at slow speeds and cannot easily move when they sense a boat approaching. The frequently collide with boats and are cut by the propellers. Many die from these accidents. Humans are cited to be responsible for 40% of all Manatee deaths. Manatees also die from ingesting fishhooks, litter, or becoming entangled in crab trap or monofilament line. Others find themselves trapped in a flood gate or canal lock and are crushed or drown. Yet hope is not lost. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission coordinate the rescues of injured Manatees. Once rescued, these Manatees are taken to rehabilitation centers to be cared for until they heal.

can

No Children, Mountain Goats

i find this song nothing but inspiring. and laura, i thank you for playing it tonight.

I heard from someone you're still pretty

Songs motivate me to want to learn guitar. There are two songs in particular: John Doyle's Morning Dew and Iron & Wine's Upward Over the Mountain. I have been picking up the guitar most days, teaching my fingers to curve over the strings, learning E major and minor chords, C, straining to reach G, feeling the wire cut into my skin, awkwardly holding a pick and trying to make sense of it. It's a beautiful instrument.

Heather went on a rant about oboe last night at the Sequentia concert that I thought was hilarious but also true. Oboe is a really pretty instrument. I've struggled with calling it that for years now, but I firmly believe that all instruments have the potential to be beautiful, it mostly depends on the passion of the person playing it. So it is. It also requires a LOT of maintenance. And this can be frustrating when you don't know what you are doing. Or particularly want to learn what you are doing.
So I am slowly abandoning it. Yes. I am letting oboe go.
I would really like to give it to a freshman music major who loves oboe but couldn't necessarily afford one. Or donate it to the oboe studio. Because oboe is not an instrument that you can just pick up and play. As I said before, it requires maintenance.
I realize that guitar requires maintenance too. But I am excited to learn about that maintenance. When Tracey showed me how to tune a guitar last semester, I felt as if I had achieved something.
Does this sound weird? That learning to tune a guitar would be a momentous occasion in my life? Probably.
But, if I was to look deeper, I would see that being able to tune the guitar is an affirmation of something I can do that I thought I couldn't. Much like pouring cement. Biking past the loop. Possibly going to New York this summer to teach a course. Telling my Dad I didn't feel comfortable going to church with them on holidays.

There is still negativity in my life. I've come to realize that a lot of it is my reactions to experiences and events around me. I'm considering Buddhism and whenever I feel myself becoming stressed or agitated, just thinking about it calms me down. I also think about Dr. Smith's house and Dr. Mariani's amazing studio.
And admitting and pursuing what makes me happy has helped. I had an amazing conversation with Tracey on Friday, and at one moment we talked about being more drawn to social/psychological issues than global issues. I've also come to acknowledge that I am drawn to writing, art, theater, and music. I feel like in the past I've fostered my writing and music, but starting last semester and continuing into this one, I've nurtured it.

I also am coming to realize that I want to teach. I don't think I really want to work for a non-profit or do social justice work. I don't think social justice and teaching have to be exculsive. But I want to teach creative non-fiction. I had a moment thinking about teaching creative non-fiction as a means of empowering people. Writing can be a powerful medium for healing. But also for change. Touch people in ways they don't expect. Find a way to make that statistic into a story.

Ty played the theme for Lady in the Water in Dr. Mariani's studio on Thursday. The part of the song that I think is some of the most powerful notes in music (I will attach a link to them at the end of this post) stayed with my for the remainder of the evening. The music brought up scenes from the movie--especially moments where they talk about the universe aligning and every being having a purpose.
As I was laying on my bed, replaying the notes in my mind, and the words, I felt a sense of profound purpose.
And I think that purpose is to teach.

Here's a link. Mostly I want you guys to watch the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmp1SlODtK8&feature=related

"Oh she says I'm a poor lost girl, and I'm a long ways from home."

-Anonymous 4 on their album "gloryland"

Where is it?

Here is a link to their song: http://www.last.fm/music/Anonymous+4/_/The+Lost+Girl

Solider

A post with pictures from chicago is pending.

First this:

What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?
-Humbert Wolfe (From his poem, Solider)