I thought I could but I can’t hear her any more.
She’s been drowned out and shut down by screams of orphans crippled by war, calls to choose: ‘heat or eat’, argument after argument with unfeeling technology in a desperate bid for an appointment with a doctor, dentist etc. and raging debates about badly phrased tweets.
I hear: dictates to tighten belts, rally for the economy, accept less, do more and forsake security for a zero-hour contract or another dive into another war.
Not the soft breathing of a contented world.
There are no quiet days when the world we DO have… is wheezing, decaying, fracturing under toxic waste, profitable business and refusal to prioritise the ultimate priority: our life-support-system (nature+).
Arundhati sees too though that another world is already here and every day it gets ever more ‘another’ in all the wrong ways.
...
“Never counted in the "costs" of war are the dead birds, the charred animals the murdered fish, incinerated insects, poisoned water sources, destroyed vegetation. Rarely mentioned is the arrogance of the human race toward other living things with which it shares this planet. All these are forgotten in the fight for markets and ideologies. This arrogance will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species.”-Arundhati Roy
...
Nature doesn’t have a say, doesn’t have a seat at any table where its erasure would matter. And in this world of silos and limited-siloed-views that discount the memories of the elders… what our young see, feel and hear - becomes their ‘new normal’ in each new fast-moving moment.
Forgotten:
-waterways, forests, meadows, lands that were once common
-species that now look mythical, yet were once real; just a lifetime ago
-air so clean you could taste the season
-crystal clear waters of creeks, rivers, seas -plunged into without the thought of filth, excrement and disease.
There’s nowhere to run to that won’t be touched by us, so there’s no escape and as a future ancestor, I find it impossible to know how to avoid being, a heartbreaking part of suffering to come.
Water, air, soil, nature, biodiversity are the core ingredients of our life support system and rather than responding to the alarm-bells calling for us to be safeguarding, nurturing and enabling their function - we’re hearing the bigger, louder alarm-bells on other things that matter not a jot… if there’s no air to breathe, water to drink or soil to sow.
The biggest unifier in the world - our shared reality with all living, breathing things, our dependence on nature for survival. Yet we focus instead on the minutiae that tears us apart.
Last words to Arundhati:
“...never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
