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A Bug in the Bugs
Back from a brief vacation.Five nights, bits of Long Island.
It’s good to get away,
but the Return
is always more to the point.
Back in the City,
it’s not so different from the marshland,
or the coastline.
A density of opportunities.
Every niche is occupied.
The Park is something different.
Not escape from, but restraint of,
the City.
An act of restraint,
undertaken by the City.
An Ascesis of the City.
Or so it pleases me to think of it, in deference to what I like to call my own Asceticism, though that may be a euphemism.
Asceticism may appear as withdrawal, or as refusal, but its essence is resistance.
Resistance to temptation.
That the momentum of the City was stayed, at the very center of Manhattan, was an act of great restraint, a temptation resisted, for which I remain thankful.
These thoughts surface as I ponder my recent post on the parade assaults, the inadequacy of which response still troubles me. Perhaps that’s a proper position to be in, with respect to such an event. I wonder on my need both to address the matter, and to ignore it. And now I find myself in a similar position regarding the West Nile Virus, and pesticide spraying.
Actually, the mosquito-borne virus is a concern closer to my heart, but I would likely be unaware of it, if not for the human-borne mania surrounding it. I’m not immune to public health concerns, and certainly we have the right to defend ourselves, but from my perspective, the general poisoning of the environment is not an appropriate response to a relatively minor threat from a specific organism.
But I’m practicing a mode of thought which will lead me to actually support the virus, as an entity with as much right to existence as any other. It’s just doing what comes naturally. If I had a strong enough magnifier, I could go out looking for it. Of course, I don’t really want to get it. I’m not at high risk, despite being bitten by mosquitoes in the park. The mortality is generally at the far ends of the actuarial table: most people exposed don’t become symptomatic. From a statistical viewpoint, we might be better off letting the “epidemic” run its course, and building our own resistance. It would be one thing if we could attack the virus itself, but our current strategy is likely to succeed only in breeding a hardier carrier for it. The real problem is the afflicted birds. Their plight is harder for us to address, and it’s likely that their ability to deal with the disease will be a key factor in determining its ultimate threat to us.
Mosquitoes you will always have with you,
to paraphrase another sometime ascetic.
So the temptation is to be noble, and reasoned, about my resistance to the spraying.
But the real asceticism is in admitting that my interests are purely selfish.
I’m not likely to get sick, but lots of innocent insects could die, and looking at bugs is one of the best things going, this time of year. Butterflies and Dragonflies are great through the binocular. I even got a look at a Cicada on the wing, it’s slow, wavering flight, bulbous form, and metallic sheen reminiscent of a 1950s movie space ship. Some small insects will allow magnified viewing through a hand lens. You’d be surprised at the tiny monsters lurking in the pretty blossoms.
My turning away is really a turning toward their level of reality.
My faith is that their reality represents our birthplace, and remains our birthright, no matter what we have erected in-between us. Immersion in that world is salutary, and, moreover, a necessity for maintaining our perspective amid the myriad realities of this splintered Creation.
If our senses had no limit, if we could see in all directions at once, we would never turn away from anything.
As it is, we must ignore one thing, in order to see another. To keep the Whole in view, when all attention is drawn in one direction, someone must look the other way.
Such is the direction of the Ascetic gaze.
To justify myself then, or to say how it is that responsibilities are distributed among us, and how, though I try to care about some things, I really care about others, but that I do care...
A Triad:
Three Sorts of Things to be Done
There are some things which everyone must do;
There are some things which must be done, but not everyone will do them;
There is something which must be done, that only you can do.
I’m looking closely, in order to discover, and thereby accomplish, the third necessity. To do so may entail looking the other way, but somebody has to do it.
Get 'em While You Can
Marginal Behavior
Here's a contradiction: thermodynamically, heat equals motion, but the heat of Summer seems to slow us down, rather than increasing our speed.Actually, it’s a matter of scale: our bodies’ behavior slows to avoid overheating on the cellular level. We’re just not accustomed to identifying the heat with speed. We say “I’m too hot”, not “I’m too fast”. It amounts to the same thing, under the microscope, but we only make the connection while waiting for a watched pot to boil. Then again, there’s the notion of that cultivated boil-over, the “Long Hot Summer”, when our natural lassitude is overruled in an orgy of expenditure; physical and psychic; fast and hot.
All of which goes to show that the metaphorical relationships between Culture and Nature are not simple, or direct, or consistent.
Since I use the Park as a tool for examining such relationships, I find myself feeling obliged (if somewhat impotent) to address the recent incidents of mass sexual harassment, which occurred in the Park, pursuant to the Puerto Rican Day parade. The news has been widely reported, and I provide no links. The topic opens any number of cans of worms, most of which I’d prefer to avoid. While Annelids are themselves of interest, I can’t afford to get bogged down in talk-show confrontation and vulgar psychologizing. (Perhaps one day we'll discuss the psychology of bogs, but that's another subject.)
I started out thinking that these incidents were not within my purview; not really a Park matter, as such. They had more to do with crowd (i.e. mob) issues, which have plagued various of the city's parades over the years. The fear which the Park engenders usually has to do with confrontation in isolated areas, especially at night. The present events happened on the margins of the Park, in daylight, and in front of many people; conditions which should mitigate against such lawlessness. This proves much more unsettling than the odd rape or murder occurring in some secluded shadow.
Still, if the attacks were not of the Park, they were contiguous, and thereby related to it. The relaxation of rectilinearity at the Park's edge suggests the breakdown of social codes which hold our "animal nature" in check. This is the same premise as the pastourelle: the sexualization of the natural landscape, (and its inhabitants), which must be held at bay by the strictures of the civilized urban environment.
One thing I’ve learned in the Park is that margins are always interesting. This is a basic ecological principle. Wherever there is a margin; an edge; a border between types of environment; wood and meadow; ocean and shore, there you will find more; more species, (drawn from both spheres); more interaction; more possibilities. Things heat up, so to speak.
The Park is but a green sliver in the city’s stony flesh. In a sense, it’s all edge. Perhaps it did offer the environment which made it possible for atrocity to ferment. It provided refuge; a place to congregate with impunity. It had freely flowing water; a necessity for drinking or dousing. And it offered prey.
All the same things that the migrant birds come for.
Let me stop this sophistry right now.
I’ve heard too many critiques of this situation couched in the terms of the natural, and the social, sciences. Mob, or male, psychology; or maybe you prefer evolutionary genetics?
It’s a political choice, of course.
Do these disciplines have something to say in the matter?
Certainly, but they do so in specialized languages, not fully understood, even by their speakers.
Everything else is interpretation: you might as well be dealing with poetry. Or mythology. Or religion.
Mostly, we start with our own cherished belief, then selectively extract “expert” evidence out of context, arguing backwards, towards our premise. That’s the opposite of how science is supposed to work, but typical human behavior. Observed even in scientists.
We’ve always had our reasons, but we’ve never exhausted the Mystery of why we are Bad.
Some would say it’s in our Nature.
I say it’s in our nature to make our own path, a cultural road that can lead us away from behavior that shames us, “natural”, or not.
It is our duty to do better than this.
Science can help by articulating nature, revealing every sort of sexual strategy, from females that eat their partner while mating (mantis), to male gestation (sea horse).
Which behavior is more "natural"?
We have choices.
Nature will not justify our decisions.
If we choose to be Good, we can learn much from nature.
Both through her interpreter, science, and also through direct, (ecstatic), immersion.
But neither way will dispel the Mystery.
Both paths offer suggestions, but few answers.
And no guarantees.
The paths converge at our point of existence, and end there.
The next step is ours: it commits us.
Let us not violate our commission.
Let us step beyond the margin we inhabit.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
These notes are scrawled upon the margins of the Arboretum, addressing matters beyond my means, if not my implications.
But I fear I’ve said little of use about this blight.
I know not what to do, other than to oppose it, in my heart, at the least.
I’d like to think I would have helped, had I been there, but how likely is that?
I wasn’t there: I know better than to patronize such an occasion.
I protected myself.
Only natural.
For myself, I have made this place, this parallel Park.
It is open to all.
Nor will its gates be barred.
I will trust, more out of hope than belief, that anyone who finds somewhat of worth here is beyond (if not incapable of) such deplorable deeds as have been elsewhere done.
And even if some ruffians show up, I mean them no harm.
I'll do no worse than bore them.
Independence From...?
Our Nation's Natal Celebration is ever referred to by its date, and it marshals Summer’s symbols, as much as those of nationhood. Still, more attention is given to the rubric of this day than to many another official Holiday.Proud of ourselves, we are.
And not without some cause. Or, at least, I will allow that America is “The Greatest Country In The World”, and other such patriotic pieties.
The thing about Home is that those who live there always feel that way about it.
Even the Wasteland is but a debasement of the best place.
We are not yet totally debased, but lax, perhaps. Lazing in the lap of Summer, lingering into the long twilight, careless with firecrackers.
The incendiaries, in conjunction with the flag, recall not so much our war of origin, as that later, vaguer conflict, the War of 1812. Bombs bursting in air; flag still there...all of that business.
We barely remember what that war was about. A generation after the Revolution, Enlightenment ideals had given way to a less philosophical confrontation. Our National Anthem is a relic of that war, and the Park contains another: the Blockhouse, where the flag still flies, albeit with some added stars. Built in 1814, it remains upon the rocky northern height, guarding against a British attack that will not come.
George Washington famously warned against foreign entanglements, yet what are we, other than entangled? We pride ourselves on independence, but what are we independent of? Britain? We still rely upon Her language. Our racial and ethnic tensions are rooted to this day in the colonial entanglement of “old” and “new” worlds. The Blockhouse looks out over Harlem, a Dutch name now borne by another people’s ghetto: a presence which unjustifiably dissuades some from visiting the north end of the Park.
In America, we exalt the individual, but who among us stands alone?
Self and Other; Individual and Community; Citizen and Nation; these are dialectic names for the same old Mystery.
We might use this occasion to learn Its ways.
A Nation is not Nature, and one cannot closely study the natural world and still feel independent. The body of the Goddess is woven of relationships. Predator and prey are interdependent, conflicting only as individuals. If we no longer need fear being eaten, still we may learn something from those plants which want us to eat them.
They are dying for their country, while teaching us the art of cultivation.
Is it wrong, then, to feel a puff of Pride?
In Self, or Country, is it not justified?
Can preen in one, but not the other?
Has not Pride its uses?
Ah, there forever lies our crisis:
The worst sins bear the best excuses.
Exalt the All, with individual humility.
No contradiction, on a deepening Summer evening.
Be glad of Home,
but remember that the World beyond defines it.
Let each voice join in song, in anthem,
the one that we have overwritten,
a palimpsest of our desires:
And there with good fellows,
We’ll learn to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus’s Vine.
In the shadows gathering beneath the Blockhouse, Fireflies flicker silently.
This is their season.
Theirs are fireworks worth patronizing.
Let the bombs burst where they may.