Earth Day

I don't know how it will all turn out, but I do know that, in the end, we won't be able to control it.

I don't pretend to know how fast this planet we're riding is spinning through the universe. All I know is that it's moving pretty fast, and there are lots of other things in the cosmos that are moving just as quickly. Who knows when our world will collide with another? Who knows when this sun will explode and burn us all?

Unfortunately, I'm afraid those sorts of apocalypses won't be the ones we have to suffer through. I'd welcome a comet to smash into the soft soil of Illinois, like a heavenly bullet passing through the head of a rabid dog, putting the animal out of its misery, and saving the rest from the fear of it. That sort of end to humanity would be less painful, I think, than the slow, painful one we're bound to suffer.

In middle America, I grew up surrounded by a certain sentiment that was critical of environmental movements. As a boy, it seemed to me, Native Americans, Greenpeace, and other sorts of voices that spoke out concerning environmental movements were presented as problems. And sure. that sort of message is threatening to a rural man's way of life. Who's to say a farmer doesn't love the planet? Who's to say a hunter doesn't love wildlife? There's a certain kind of bristling that a rural person feels when city folk bring their audacious pontifications about what's good for the planet and demand greater oversight over the management of the lands our grandfathers have cultivated for centuries. In Illinois, there's a general distrust between Springfield and Chicago, just as I imagine there must be between Albany and Manhattan, Sacramento and Los Angeles, Austin and Houston.

Policy, the bastard child of love and fear. The word is offensive. Nobody likes it. It's a stubborn word filled with the baggage of politics and policemen and polite behavior. It means people. And nobody likes people. They're always in the way of each other, making it impossible to speak freely. Making rules and collecting taxes. Maintaining law and order, money and trade. Policy is the curse of humanity: the product of this awareness we have of each other, to feel love and fear of each other at the same time.

Meanwhile, we get distracted by Lamborghinis and lasagna, Sports Center and CNN. We lose track of wheat and rice, the seeds that feed us, that spring up from soil and water, never growing higher off the face of the earth than just inches above a grown man's knee.

All you know for sure is what you know right now, and you'll have to decide how to treat this ball of dust that's carrying you through the cosmos while you're conscious of the fact that it is. Will you be a faithful husband to her, or will you pimp her out while you can, while you're young, lusty, and full of life? There's no policy to prevent you from doing what you can get away with.

Motherland, where do your borders lie? Mine lie in your ashes and your dust. Take a fistful of dirt into your hands today and ask yourself if you'll outlive it.

It will beat you, in the end.