Spring Song

The cold weather, freezing nights and brisk days, came just in time for spring. Seasons out of order. Life out of rhythm. A long debate about the value of human beings in environmental politics has convinced me not to trust those who call themselves "deep ecologists." Not because I do not think paying close attention to nature will help us grow a better society, but because after the definition comes a rigid dogma that does not seem to allow humans the liberty to be nature too. Human rights are violated the world over, and these do not even show up on the radar. I wonder, with a philosophy like that, who precisely they believe will be following them at the end of the day? Politics requires people. Deep ecology seems to loathe them. I don't get it and never will.

Spring came yesterday without breaking the freezing mark. Today again, the light is spring, the angles are spring, the season 'looks' right, but the chill air takes too long to heat up and seems to lurk longer into the day than it should. Global fluctuations winding perilously out of sync with the usual order of things. In the 19th century, geologists bickered over the definition of geological history as one defined by cataclysmic change or one defined by gradual change. They settled on the latter, though holding the former close enough to remind us that these were part too. Sometimes, everything suddenly spirals very quickly into something else. A plate slips and ruptures, a flow of water is stopped, the temperature stays at just the right level for just the wrong period of time. A woman once wrote a powerful book about this season, spring. Worried that it may become silent, because of our hands.

What politics do we turn to when those with small power abuse it and those with big power grow more selfish by the day? Some turn selfish themselves, stealing what they can, pretending themselves without an awareness of how foolish they look. Justified by their own limited view. Others hide behind things, as best they can, trying not to catch the rebound of their mistakes. They use people, hurt people, take people's money, and impulsively pick battles with anyone who could help them. And, in the end, all their rear-guard action is all they have done for a decade. Nothing else. A house of cards. I know a story about a family of farmers who pretended to bake. But the bakery was always empty because they could not even discover how to turn the ovens on. And the farmers knew nothing of the farm, and the servants stole and lied and kept the owners in the dark. You can read all about it elsewhere in all of its precise and amusing detail, if you can find it.

Spring has sprung! Happy season!