Just another day in the war against nature

11/7/1

I find myself silent, black hoodie up, lying down, arms covered over my eyes blocking the sun, what I see is the grass. The grass. And then-flashback.

 I remember it was summer and this entire mini prairie that I crouch on now was alive with sunflowers, and various tall plants, like lavender. I didn’t know much about plants then (don’t know much about the now),but I knew there was something beautiful about this area that made me subconsciously venture there at my spare time, accompanied with my dog. The grass that I lay on now, was bright green and smooth then, and I always thought, this is here to stay, they-can-not-touch-it. As worn down and small fraction of what’s left of nature, it was still monumental to me, surpassing the awe of any skyscraper or city landscape you could see, To this day it is like a dying paradise. The grass passage way, always polished with dew, and the tall plants diverse with sunflowers, rabbits, spiders, hidden animals of all sorts, buzzing and moving with life. It was easy to get lost, and ignore the suburban wasteland on the other side of the creek.

So my spirit is back to the present now, in the same position, at birds eye view, I look as if I had fallen down and shielding myself from a bomb above. And then the grass I glimpse at, the grass of the now, the entire pathway, scarred by the tracks of construction machines. I’m still shielding myself, but I look away from the gruesome grass, and I try to look up ahead at the rest of the pathway. I always knew the pathway was finite. And at the end was more houses, but this time, the lovely trees that used to shelter the lost animals in it, were moving in the distance. I found this scary at first, for the fact that they were moving, but then I realized that their actually being commanded to move by the construction workers- and I’m scared at that fact even more. I sit up, and something is in my stomach. It’s the deer. The deer I saw a couple of weeks ago, there were so many that time. They were hidden, untouchable. But you saw them prancing so closely all along the half wood. Half wood, I should say nearly wood. And then they just disappeared.

‘ Oh yes I remember the deer, yes they’re shooting them off now because they are so overpopulated and lost out of their natural habitat.’ Said Justine Pierce.

Justine Pierce was a middle class, woman of bold age and bold wrinkles. She works at the Cobbs Creek Environmental Branch in Yeadon. She’s seen the same things I’ve seen. And cried the same tears, when the water department destroyed the land around the creek, last summer.  I met her a last month, those were words she told me.

I watched a documentary a couple days ago called “End-Civ”, I remember a clip where an anonymous Earth First! Member talks about how they mark the trees they will leave during clear cuts. I thought about how those trees were scarred forever, as the WWII Jewish holocaust survivors were scarred for life with tattoos. Clear cuts are a holocaust. The Jews were devoured for profit, and the trees are devoured for profit.

Bears, I hear the sound of bears. Loud grizzly bears screaming, I want them to be bears. But I know they are the sounds of chainsaws and machines. And then there’s the laughter of the big bellied construction workers. They leave their coffee cups, Dunkin Donut wrappers, and gasoline tanks in on the soil. But I know I can’t be angry at them, because I know that they are just trying to make a livin’.I know they need to eat.

I walk to where there was once a beautiful landscape of trees, and I see a broken trashed up grave. And the trees, the trees, all of them piled up, past my head. Then I remember how in war they pile up the dead bodies, without proper burials. The soldiers get proper burials.  I saw only a couple trees left, they were all scarred with the X’s, I saw a black cat run up the trees as my dog Poncho went after it. Then I remember all the animals that make these trees their homes. The nests these trees provide, the oxygen, they shelter the tops soil so that life can grow.

Between the sound of the construction workers laughing as they tore down trees on the other side of creek, the loud industrial roars of the chainsaws, why do I not feel shame. Why do I not feel the tears? I’m afraid to feel, but I’m even more afraid not to. 

If pain is the only thing I can feel, than let me have the most miserable life I can. I don’t see the rationality in destroying your planet in the name of human progress.The earth is a finite resource, in fact it's not a resource it's a living thing. It’s not sanity to kill everything, in the requirements of a technological God? You can’t pay for the air you pollute, the water you blacken, the animals and land that we gobble up and replace with these deserts we call cities. We’re all guilty for when the time comes when we realize that our children can not eat money.