Victim of History or Agent of Destruction?
It is difficult for me to accept the fact that much of my life contributes directly to the destruction of the planet and yet this will no doubt be the durable fact of my life: the discrete and continual flow of toxic waste, seeping into the earth long after I am gone. How to reconcile all my discarded toothbrushes, pens, tennis shoes, all of this plastic packaging, these yogurt, spinach, kalamata olive containers, this styrofoam that now belongs to me, this bubble wrap, and all the straws I’ve ever used? How to reconcile my daily life with the mass deaths of elephants and whales from plastic ingestion, the micro slivers of plastic turning everything carcinogenic, the garbage patch, the hypoxic ocean? Friends, the planet-killing genie is out of the bottle; I’ve been releasing fragments of him into the wild for as long as I can remember. How to square my need for blueberries shipped from Oregon with the burning boreal forests of Canada? How many of the many thousands of almonds and avocados I have eaten contribute directly to California water shortages, and the drying up of the Colorado river? How much petroleum has my name on it? Does this flow of toxicity make me a victim of history? Or an agent of destruction? Both and?
That we are even now causing the deaths of future generations, the accelerating mass extinction of the majority of species and the concerted assault upon the possibility of any future human life at all is a crime for which we do not have a name. No one cares. It’s just too terrible to think about. Do we desire our own destruction? Clearly.
The long view would hold that such destruction is merely a fold in the universe; right on, I will meditate upon this. Meanwhile migrants are drowning off the coast of Pylos. Is it weird that I find it both excruciating and enlivening to be so determined by these hellacious contradictions? Held to the dying earth by my extruded waste, sinking into the ataraxia of deep-time, called onwards into the future by my desire for coffee, ice-cream, strawberries and new tennis shoes.
my new tennis shoes
