Surface Chatter
I’m terrified of the very thing I defend. In the wild, the sun and moon dictate the schedule. There are no profoundly complex unchanging factors, no certainty. You are forced to move with, not before. I’m not used to that. I live from obligation to obligation, making obligations out of desires. Some call it going through the motions, but it’s really just existing. Numb. One thing leads to the next. And the next. And the next…
Stop.
The wild beckons me with a convicted ambivalence that is absolutely irresistible. I always respond, which is why I live in fear. Terrified of the wild, that is what I am. I know not how to command and control it. It cannot be placated, outsmarted, manipulated - all the things that I, even I, rely upon in this sociopathic culture.
In the wilderness, I am the constant variable. I act, it reacts. I fear its perfect power.
The windows are wide open as I fall asleep. I do not sleep well. In a state of elevated alertness, I fear what is just beyond the screen. It could so easily enter, choke, mutilate, kill. I fear my own species’ prey.
I am a predator, subdued by the fear of my prey. I watch. I plot a way to kill. I know what to do. I’ve held a gun, even shot one a few times on my grandpa’s ranch. It’s quite something, holding a machine that can kill, maim, paralyze without much effort at all. A pull of a trigger. That would do it. It could all be over. For me, for you. For it…
Fear.
So I wander the sidewalks and the streets, press a button here and there to get across. I stroll past the building of dynamic stationary machines and zip through the parking lot of the highest grossing shop of its kind in the nation. The place sells beer. This is college. Would you presume any different? I cross the street at the yield sign, close my eyes and tense my muscles, expecting a collision. Not so. I walk through the neighborhood, through the parking lot of Vowles Elementary. The kids play on a plastic paradise. Not in, but on. You cannot engage with plastic. The church points me in the right direction, a parallel and interchangeable statement, let its implications be what you wish. A few more turns and I’m there. An orange construction gate stands guard at the entrance, a light brown dirt trail leading to the wire. Sharp right, sharp left. A field. And a forest.
You have to go left to get there. In, and then left.
I used to take the trails, a human way of expressing relation to that which it compartmentalizes, allows to thrive within the confines of its premeditated plan. We move from urban compartments to suburban compartments to natural compartments in compartments. Sometimes, the lines blur and the suburban oozes into the natural, but there is no attempt at association, no attempt at collaboration. A house. A yard. A beautiful view. We look but do not touch. We stay on the trails. We are the caged birds and we don’t even sing.
Fuck all of that.
I put my toes over the line. I, a human. I, a caged bird. I, now a rebel. I broke a rule, disregarded an unspoken law. I touched. I felt. I sang.
A tune of ubiquitous, universal loneliness. One that penetrates through every facet of my being. Because that is it. Exactly it. And the loneliness comes with the realization that so few identify with it. Not even a part, a piece, of the raw, living, and dynamic truth. Connecting us all, yet we choose estrangement.
If you want a sad story, I know plenty of those. I could shock you with an injustice fact, but what does that do? Nothing. Maybe eases my loneliness for a moment as you acquaint yourself with the horror that is my daily detachment, but then nothing.
I want a conversation, so I tell stories. I hover over cruxes to maintain a curiosity. I ask open ended questions, free to interpretation.
Beaten down. Poisoned. Commodified. Assaulted. Choked. Molested. Abused. Violated. Deceived. Murdered.
The perpetrator, the aggressor, society. Society with drifting ethics, subject to the elucidation of each capricious soul that ravages its own home. A spotless mansion. A dinner party. Cocktails. Cheers to our undue affluence!
But it’s all just entertainment - the occupation of everything that makes us human. The heart, the mind, the soul…the conscience, complex cognition, free moral agency, the capacity for introspection. Occupied. All occupied.
We talk in circles, caught in the vibrations of sound waves unfurled to capture and deafen. The white noise, a relief from the radio, a constant hum mourning the decay of sound. I quiet my mind. I need the noise to relax in this urban compartment. Only in the wild is the silence a comfort.
The toxins, they are gifts. Disguised as luxuries underneath a blanket of elitism, they seem to be delicacies, even rarities…but they are as common as the disillusionment that masks them. A mere illusion of diversity, their many forms attract and excite.
An apple, carefully chosen? Bulbous and juicy, the sun glistening off of its shiny exterior. Cross-bred, modified, tamed. “Perfected.” Loaded onto a truck, ripened on a shelf.
A week later.
An apple, carefully chosen. “Perfection.”
A world of seeming perfection, yet the tools at our disposal to obtain it are as tainted as the image itself.
I’m not. I can’t. So I go to the wild and it doesn’t care. It is; I am.
But she doesn’t sweat, she glistens. He doesn’t cry. Period. And they don’t make love, they fuck. She cries, he sweats. They fuck again.
I like being a woman. My thoughts are dismissed as a consequence of my sex. Women are crazy. I, a woman…
Fear. This time, it’s yours.
I scare you just as much as you scare me.
I’ve known it for a while now; I can feel it in my body and in my mind as they crave a fuel that no longer exists. I don’t give it to them.
I’m going to tell you a secret. And that’s that I’m dying.
I’ll tell you another secret. That’s that I’m being killed.
The weapons, everywhere. The pen extinct, the sword again proves mightier.
But let’s not talk about that, right? It’s not comfortable. Okay.
“You’re in school? Tell me…aren’t you just loving college? Do you study hard? Is there a special someone?”
Yes. I answer you with one word. I give your patronizing self the courtesy of vocalization, but just one motion of the head would do. You’re welcome.
Oh to be young again, you say. I flash an empty smile. You grin, returning what you believe is my apparent sincerity. The young are no more alive than the old. Life is a choice over which some have more dominion than others. The privileged white male, for example. It’s been a nice conversation.
I need to get out. The illusions no longer suffice. I’ve tasted the wild; its flavor lingers, awaiting a venue to be released. A flawless alignment, a perfect storm. Wait. A little more. Never time. Never the right time.
A step to the left. To get there, you have to go left. A shrinking natural compartment in the distance begs, beckons, swallows. Left. Left. Left.
Fuck it all.
I will not wait for the wild.
Clarity
The water is pretty fucking clear. I can see the bottom. A little bit of kelp. A few rocks and some ancient coral. And a good number of beautiful fish.
The fact that you can’t see this has me wondering if you’re blind. You spent fifty dollars to see this. Fifty fucking dollars. And you’re not even seeing anything. It’s not because you’re not looking; I think it’s because you can’t identify what you see.
So let me show you.
The green stuff? That’s some fucking kelp. The things that are moving? Fish. The objects at the bottom? The coral and rocks.
If you want to protect the oceans, then it is best you understand them.
Let me show you how.
I’ll dive into the water and I’ll go deeper, deeper, deeper until my head aches from the pressure. I know this feeling so don’t fucking take me out of the ocean. I don’t need to be saved. I don’t need to come up for air. I will be fine.
I feel so at home here in this cool water, surrounded by this kelp and all the other things you can’t see. What I understand protects me.
The water is pretty fucking clear.
Fog
I don’t say things exactly because I like to teeter on the edge between clarity and confusion. Plus, I don’t really know if I want you to know. It’s like when you get a little too much butter on my bread.
Shit. I don’t want to eat that.
The light you see through the fog is a lighthouse; I can tell you that with certainty. I know what’s behind that wall too: a desperate and gluttonous businessman in a suit and red tie. It’s going to rain tomorrow, then be uncharacteristically warm. It’s not too hard to predict the weather. I know. I do know. I know exactly.
But everything is relative. You didn’t come from the same place as me so I cannot force your heart into flames through the realization of flesh and failure.
I’m not good at everything but I do what I’m good at with precision. I’m good at creating hurricanes that blind, but damage nothing. I’m good at doing more. I’m good at empathy and indistinct articulation. And I’m good at giving the heart and mind until everything aches.
So be on the watch. There’s a storm coming you might not see and I’ll love you till it hurts all the way through. And then some more.
The Moment I Became Undefined
I’ll tell you about the moment it happened, the moment I became undefined.
I don’t really need you to know; you just seem curious. You know just as well as I about how little we truly know. I may just enjoy that a little bit more.
From a chrysalis to a creature in flight, this transformation is absolute. I don’t know why you burned a rose or why she prayed by candlelight…I really don’t know anything. And that is why the body can compensate for failed cognition.
I thought I knew who I was and I thought I knew who I’d be. And poetically, I knew neither, only the person in between. I knew what was happening and I knew it wasn’t a dream. All of it I could define without knowing what any of it meant. But the in between knew that none of that really mattered.
Our breath and blood do not change, even in the moment we become undefined. This is all I have, but none of it is mine.
Released. The moment of no definition. It feels good.
Animals Were Treated Cruelly to Create These Products
Look me in the eyes and tell me that animals don’t feel the shocks, torture, physiological and psychological pain of our exploitative methods of producing products. That they don’t know pain, that tortured and abused animals are just a byproduct of “human progression.”
Look me in the eyes and tell me this is right, this is necessary.
They don’t feel.
Turn a blind eye to these atrocities and do nothing to stop them. Call those who care about animals “extreme,” “radical,” even “terrorists.”
Then look me in the eyes and tell me you feel. Tell me more lies.
Journeys and You
I was too dizzy to drive and too weak to walk when you told me to go find myself in the woods. An active engagement with that which is larger than myself, the essence of exploration. I’ve always liked traveling.
I don’t go to beaches to bask in the sun or to bronze my pale, European skin and I don’t go to mountains to view the summit from the ground. I go to oceans to be enveloped in their vigor, so subtle does their expression differ between passionate love and jealous rage. If love, well…I need it. If rage, let me fall victim.
I go to mountains to dream of the top. To imagine, to wish, to get lost until the sweet alpine air reminds me of my dynamic nature. That’s when I see the ground.
I can’t give it up. You believe in me but you’re the only one. And it was just the other day that I felt your love for me for the first time, when I looked at you as you looked toward the sky and said “I am so angry.” Your anger like the ocean, indistinguishable from love. Because they are one in the same.
The earth doesn’t call to me, it is me. What you do to it, you do to me. You do to yourself.
Stop breathing and feel the wanting, a craving for life’s most basic elements. You say the land doesn’t feel, but what you feel is what the land feels. Stop breathing for a moment. You are the land. What do you feel?
I like to link events with no connection, to demonstrate that all relates but none is defined. So thanks for showing me the fatal cliff, because when I jumped, I found it really wouldn’t hurt me at all.
Fall in love, and do it now. Love what most do not. You don’t need to explain it to me or to anyone. Skip work to play because you probably need more practice playing. Fall down. A lot. You’ll find when you give in to the ground, you embark on the greatest journey of your life which begins and ends, but never finishes. Some things last. You will. That won’t.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Dies
From the inspiration/For death and demise/Comes a sweet persuasion/That death itself denies.
I bled on white sheets/And died on your floor/Death is unforgiving/Permitting nothing more.
And as a caged bird/I’ll tell you why they sing/The only tune of truth/’Cause they feel everything.
So let us burn the sky/And toxify the sea/Lighting you on fire/As an invite to burn me.
All we love we lose/Bound to loss, love betrays/Alive, we feel and hurt/Pain forces our decay.
So the caged bird dies/Smothered by its heart/That felt and lived too much/Fading from its start.
An everlasting end/Is permanence realized/In permanence we learn/It’s impermanence disguised.
I Am Pro-Life
I am Pro-Life.
But I use this term differently.
I am Pro-Life and everything that supports life. I am Pro-Human, Pro-Elephant, Pro-Fungus, Pro-Atmosphere, and Pro-Ocean. And yes, I am Pro-Fetus.
It has been an egocentric and narcissistic error to suggest the term Pro-LifeTM exclusively defines those who seek to preserve human life. Life is all things living and breathing. Life is all that is good and all that we’d like to ignore; life is your neighbor, your baby, your lover. Life is the lichen on the trees, the trout in the stream, and the buffalo that trample the grasslands. Life is the simple amoeba to the obscure Bifidobacterium longum that colonizes the human gut, without which we would not survive. Life is the trendy tiger to the unfashionable slug. Life is far more than just humans.
The same ideology that has given rise to the Pro-LifeTM platform has been responsible for crusades that have intentionally subdued entire cultures and wars that have been waged in the name of spreading a subjectively superior ideology based on the forceful pursuit, domination, and enslavement of nations. It has been responsible for the very destruction and permanent toxification of the planet justified by the human charge to maintain dominion over nature. It has been responsible for the discrimination and subjugation of the vulnerable.
These things, however, are ignored by the dominant culture as it too supports exploitative practices. This Pro-LifeTM ideology is thus able to continue, grow, and strengthen freely under a semblance of morality, nobility, and love.
But it should be very clear that an ideology that propagates the destruction of the earth and supports the forceful and often violent pursuit of cultures with ethics incongruent to its own is not a culture that is Pro-Life nor Pro-LifeTM . Rather this is a selective culture, a culture that seeks to maintain a monopoly on morality for its own benefit and longevity.
Tugging at the heartstrings of a callous society, this ideology places abortion at the center of its social platform, displaying photographs of mutilated fetuses, forcing anyone who disagrees with a Pro-LifeTM position to look like a wildly wicked, sick individual.
Abortion is commonly the first ethical issue to arise during a healthy political debate, obscuring other moral matters and serving as a distraction to more pressing issues, such as the foreseeable annihilation of our planet and the inevitable collapse of all the infrastructures that support and maintain our fundamentally unsustainable society.
To clarify, I am not making a statement to demean the severity of the consequences of abortion, but rather to point out a general inconsistency in society.
That is that photographs of mutilated fetuses elicit a reaction that is followed with action and mobilization of a population. Photographs of physical and sexual abuse in sweatshops elicit momentary sympathy, followed with an amnesiac response: retail therapy.
That is that if I told you that annually there are about 43 million abortions worldwide1, your reaction would likely be significantly stronger than if I told you that annually, approximately 18 million acres of forests are destroyed2 . Fetuses and forests have much in common with one key difference: the fetus cannot exist without the forest.
Collectively, we have become more concerned about the wellbeing of the unborn than those already alive. We worry about the destruction of embryos while closing our eyes to the massive famine, rape of our land, and oppressive inequality. We raise signs with bloody pictures of babies in front of abortion clinics while simultaneously endorsing a war where thousands of innocent people have been mercilessly slaughtered in the effort to protect and pursue the lifeblood of this culture: oil. We demand the rights of the unborn be honored while condemning a woman who exercises her right to have dominion over her body. We place such high value on unborn life while ignoring the plights and perils of life itself. Our babies are being born into an inhospitable world, one that oppresses and rejects, one in which they choke on toxic air and gag poisoned water. To fight for the rights of the unborn is hypocritical if we fail to recognize and address the relentless attacks of industrial civilization on life that is already alive.
I am Pro-Life. I care deeply and empathize with the unborn; I care deeply and empathize with the living women faced with an unplanned pregnancy that for whatever reason they cannot or feel unable to carry to term. I care deeply and empathize with the families and victims that have been subject to terrorist attacks, both domestically and abroad. This includes but is not limited to the infamous 9/11 attack, those imprisoned and tortured at Guantanamo Bay, the indigenous peoples that are simply disregarded as western civilization steals and destroys their land, lifestyle, livelihood, and the many middle-easterners that have perished as the great and mighty America unceasingly plunders and pillages to protect its interests. I care deeply and empathize with the river that is contaminated and lifeless due to reckless coal mining. I care deeply and empathize with the open spaces and living land that has been silenced and suffocated by pavement and the many creatures, great and small, that have been casualties of this abusive and inexorable culture.
I am Pro-Life because I care deeply and empathize with these peoples, these creatures, these living elements of our planet. I am Pro-Life and all life, inextricably linked.
I am not Pro-LifeTM .
1 Guttmacher Institute. “Facts on Induced Abortion Worldwide.” Rep.
2012. Print.
2 Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations. “Deforestation.” Rep. 2012. Print.
Gears
A scream, a holler, met by deafened ears/Placation, our fathers throw our hands back on the gears.
So we are just parts of a well-oiled machine/That destructs and distracts and destroys the pristine.
Ignoring the parts that allow it to proceed/The machine goes forward to satisfy its greed
The levers, the gears, and the cogs that drive it home/Are abused and tempered and rusted, bruised, and worn.
A plea, a cry, no one cares to hear/The machine gets louder, gear is scraping gear
The tears of the living, they don’t even look/But we are tomorrow’s leaders, warriors, and crooks.
Epiphany: Nontraditional Relationships
“Normal” relationships are based on pre-established precedents and existing social norms. Therefore, these relationships often lack authenticity.
Nontraditional relationships require the couple to seek original methods to maintain a strong connection.
Thus, these relationships tend to be based off deeper emotional and intellectual bonds that transcend physical and sexual attractions.
Perhaps a deviance away from the traditional would result in a more genuine relationship that would long endure.
Precedent based relationships can and do work, but stand untested by the challenges of distance and instability.
The intentional nature of nontraditional relationships makes them inherently more substantive.
So ask yourself, is it unrealistic or unlikely? Because you can work with unlikely.
Come On, Take A Little Off
“Come on, take a little off,” you commanded, then proceeded to strip me of my clothing, clawing at the flesh beneath. What I was told would be a safe place in a harsh world was instead just another relentless attack. Every night of my life.
A barren wasteland overtook the solid ground on which you struck me mercilessly. “Shut the fuck up,” you’d tell me, “This is how it is now.” And then you’d add, with satirical jest, “It’ll all be okay.” You stole my innocence and wounded me. You took everything away, leaving a beating heart to die alone.
So I screamed for help, but no one listened. I told of this intimate torture, but they all denied such explicit violence could even exist. I called authority, but they defended the attacks. And you broke my legs, but I kept running. You never let me go. Haunted by the damage you had caused, I was no longer human, but prey to remorseless force.
And then someone new picked me up and brought me to a dark room. He held my hands and tore off his shirt; I braced myself for whatever pain might follow. But looking into the eyes of my new captor, I saw something I’d never seen before. Tears. Pure and understanding. And then I saw wounds. Identical to my own.
And he softly muttered, “I Know.”
“Come on, take a little off,” he invited. And uncensored and exposed, I was safe. This was healing. Wounds into scars, helplessness into rage.
We face another night. But the dawn is on the horizon. And in our weakened, wounded state, we will strengthen together.
And that is what love looks like.
The Journey of You and The Wind
Like a fire that ignited the dry brush in my heart/You took my misguided mind and you tore it apart.
And brought me through the highs and lows of finding right in wrong/You took my brittle bones, shook them, and made them strong.
Then sent me off to land filled with dirt and mire/Gave me a couple matches, told me to light a fire.
So I took the kindle that you identified/Let it rise in flames and then threw it outside.
Where it traveled with the wind to an undiscovered place/You told me to go find it, my fire I should chase.
So I asked the wind to take me where she may/Faithful, she responded and she blew me away.
I will fall into the fire wherever I may land/The fire I created through the passion of my hand.
You find where you should be when with the wind you run/She carries seeds of flowers so they can find the sun.
The Hope For The World Is You
A moonscape replaces a mountain. Another species becomes extinct. An old-growth forest is reduced to nothing. A wheezing asthmatic chokes on polluted air. The dominant culture is destroying itself. Dependent upon violent and exploitative practices, our culture is covertly causing the collapse of life as we know it. It is a culture ruled by masochistic powers that succumb to the bribes of greedy corporate tyrants at the expense of the planet and all life that calls earth home. It is a culture that embraces unethical and unjust institutions, turning a blind eye to its reliance on their abominable methods. It is a culture that blows up mountains, outsources work to children treated as slaves, and poisons its own air and water in the name of profit and convenience. It is a culture that is fundamentally unsustainable, a culture so unavoidable that it forces each of its members to become complicit in its crimes.
The ability to see this dominant culture in its true light generates overwhelming sadness, but also ignites tremendous feelings of responsibility. When eyes with conscience have been awakened to the realities of society’s degradation into filth, they have no choice but to reject the dominant culture. Empowered by the ability to dream of a world free from the shackles of corruption, these awakened souls form the counterculture; they are the other side of the seesaw, the light to each night.
As an individual who has heard the cry of the oppressed and exploited, I feel blessed to have been enlightened with the understanding necessary to begin to reverse this culture’s tendency toward destruction. In a society plagued by denial of its daily death wish, I recognize that I, joined by my fellow visionaries, am my own only hope. I am the resistance against the powers-that-be who seek to destroy; I am the better tomorrow for which I so desperately long. I must respond to the atrocities committed by a society ruled by disillusioned power not with the cowardice of passive acceptance, but with bravery found through love. I am one of the few fighters left, and united with others who have felt the hopelessness of a dying planet, we have the power to change the course of history.
Like Siguard Olson once said, “The whole world depends on you.” Truer words have never been spoken. We must each find the strength within ourselves to fight against the pervasive injustices of this dominant culture. In melodious synchrony, we must allow our hearts to beat as one, forming a chorus of thought and action impossible to ignore.
Each day, we say our last goodbye to hundreds of species as they slip into extinction. Each day, the glaciers are melting. The seas are rising. The planet is heating. Each day, innocent people are dying in wars waged to protect the interests of a wealthy few. Life as we know it is changing. Nature is choking. The earth is dying. And the cries are heard by few.
“The hope for the world is in you. The whole world depends on you.” Attentive to the urgency of the fight for a livable future and aware of the precarious position on which my generation stands, I will act boldly and bravely. We are the leaders for which we have been waiting; the only miracle we are going to get is us.
Words
It was endless, they were spilling, the wind died and they kept drilling.
Deep into the land that I thought was mine it, strip it down this land was never mine until it’s gone, moonscape beneath our feet of dead and lifeless ground, but we do not miss a beat into submission by the powers that be, a dulled society, watch it disappear, what we need no longer here is the solution, the magic melody that could switch their tune and finally make them see what we have done? The madness must be ended, our planet will be gone if she is not defended from the greed of those who seek to destroy our land, tomorrow will be bleak if we fail to understand and turn the other cheek in discomfort, in the fight for a livable future should be a given right and if you begin to turn away and blindly close the book, ask yourself why and take another look and see the pain of all the lives that you seem to ignore, all this growth and profit, but what is it all for? A mansion for the rich? A few more years of coal? Wake to reality, it’s the future being sold for the here and now, unfair I think ahead but my elders do not care about the time that will exist when they all depart, economically wise? I beg them to ask their heart if they really want to leave a legacy of lies and filth and destruction, causing eventual demise of everything we know.
So go ahead and watch as my future disappears; go ahead and say I cry unnecessary tears. But one day when you see that what I said was true, you’ll cry the same tears and there’ll be nothing you can do.
A CALL TO ACTION
There is a movement arising. Are you not aware? Do you not care?
If you answered yes to either of these questions, you are indeed a part of the problem. It does not take much more than a simple search on the nearest social media outlet to realize that there are a number of people who are fighting against the institutions that oppress the common man and rape vast amounts of land. You are not free; you are not living in a world that cares for clean air, water, or soil. Human and life needs are being suffocated in the name of profit. You are shackled to unforgiving laws, silenced by the corporatism of our government and subjected to land grabs that are exacerbating the change of our climate, poisoning the air and water, and killing indigenous peoples that have lived off the land for hundreds of years.
Dumbed down and numbed by TV, industry-driven music, and media controlled by crooks, the powers-that-be have you exactly where they want you. No need to worry about us challenging their power and tired ways; we are too busy making sure we catch the most recent episode of Jersey Shore. But there are indeed a number of us awake, fighting, and hopeful.
To those looking to put your passion, skills and desire to test—THIS IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION.
We need a culture that is willing to embrace and support the actions of the, as of now, few.
This means turning your media devices into channels of communication and means of spreading news.
This means utilizing the skills with which you have been gifted to better organizations and individuals fighting for a brighter future.
This means doing what you can to create a more sustainable and engaged community, wherever you reside.
This means giving credit and attention to actions against institutions and injustices – forcing the media outlets to cover it.
This means acknowledging the moral right to fight for our planet and its inhabitants, rejecting the notion that those who seek to profit from destruction are morally superior.
This means standing up for what is, by every natural law, right and good. No more withdrawal in the name of appeasement. No more silence.
This means becoming blind to differences once and for all, recognizing that we are all connected in this ever-changing world.
This means returning to a mindset where relationships are valued more than technology and love is restored in the core of every heart.
This means becoming just a little more fearless.
If direct actions are happening near or far and you hear of it, do what you can to create awareness or better yet, join the action.
I come across this thought quite often: What will you tell your children you were doing while the world was being intentionally raped and systematically ruined by corporate madmen? Do not be confused— this world is yours and mine. It will become what we allow it to become. If we fight for what we know as truth and justice, it will spin in our direction, not the direction in which the tyrants have been unnaturally spinning it for however many years.
This is our civil rights movement; this is our fight against Nazi rule. The fight for a clean, sustainable, intelligent, equal, and just world is here and now. It is seen in the flattened mountains of West Virginia, in the poisoned water of the east coast, in the obliterated land in Alberta, and the undeniable change in our climate. Our planet is under attack and we are failing to give any support to those who are fighting for us and it. And we must.
I write with urgency and sincerity. This fight will continue with or without you, but without a culture supporting the resistance, the status quo will remain for a long time. And the problem with that is we do not have a long time. The forests and oceans do not have a long time. Our climate does not have any more time. Life here on this planet no longer has time. And your children may not even know what time is. This must be realized and digested quickly.
My brothers and sisters: this is a fight for our lives and if you are going to tell me that the distractions and restraints of our capitalist consumer society are going to put you on the shelf while others fight, then I want nothing to do with our generation. Let us be the line in the sand. We are past the age of misinformation and ignorance. We know what systems are working and which are not. The ones that are not are degrading and destroying our ability to live happy lives. So it is time to fight back. And if you can’t find the time to fight, then allow and embrace the work of others who can.
Over the past couple of years of my life I have spent many a day traveling and dedicating time to causes and struggles. Blessed I am. Allowing me to meet kids from all over the country, people that have inspired and helped guide me to be the person I am today. But this is aside from the point. These kids, these creatures, my brothers and sisters, all had one thing in common. And that was hope. Hope for a better tomorrow, hope that others, like you, will join the fight because they know full well it cannot be won by the small amount that fight. However uncompromising and persistent we may be, we need support and help.
This is a call to action to all whose hearts beat for justice and truth, for all those who see a better world when they close their eyes. This is an invite; we here in the middle of the struggle are dying to have you come help.
Will you answer the call? Or will you become one of the millions that before you have died in the system, victim to oppressive, unjust ways without a bone strong enough to stand?
With Love,
Christopher Corrigan
Chloe Gleichman
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