MOTHER NATURE REVISITED

The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Myself and Señor Xólotl

When you came back to me –

I painted a green day-hand and a brown night-hand
holding up Mexico, her canyons and deserts,
    her candelabra cacti.

And we were there, embraced by our land.
You were my naked baby
who is reborn every minute with your third eye open. 

Even our dog Señor Xólotl was curled
on the wrist of evening,
ready to bear our souls to the underworld if he had to.

Together, we stared out beyond the picture, saw
in the dark window a small woman in a wheelchair
cast out in a workshop far beyond the moon,

desperately mixing the colours of love
    until they vibrated –
watermelon greens, chilli reds, pumpkin orange.

She hurriedly drew the shattered arms
of the universe –
                             holding us all up

as if we were a mountain dripping roots and stones.

From What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (Seren, 2010)

© 2011 Pascale Petit

**

The modern idea of nature is chiefly benevolent. We speak of the nurturing “Mother Nature.” We don’t hear much about “Nature red in tooth and claw.” But let us take a look at that interesting passage in Tennyson’s In Memoriam:

55.

The wish, that of the living whole

No life may fail beyond the grave,

Derives it not from what we have

The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,

And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

Upon the great world’s altar-stairs

That slope thro’ darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

  

 56.

‘So careful of the type?’ but no.

From scarped cliff and quarried stone

She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone:

I care for nothing, all shall go.

‘Thou makest thine appeal to me:

I bring to life, I bring to death:

The spirit does but mean the breath:

I know no more.’ And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law–

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek’d against his creed–

Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,

Who battled for the True, the Just,

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or seal’d within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

That tare each other in their slime,

Were mellow music match’d with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer, or redress?

Behind the veil, behind the veil.

~ here Nature’s indifference to human needs is duly lamented.  “I care for nothing; all shall go” is her reply to man’s desperate plea for immortality – and if not immortality, then at least of some show of caring.

Man’s helplessness was presented earlier in Canto 54:

So runs my dream, but what am I?

An infant crying in the night,

An infant crying for the light

And with no language but a cry.

~ together with the “lame hands of faith,” Tennyson, though in the end defending religion, seems mainly to have eloquently stated the case for nature’s alleged “cruelty.” Cruelty, however, implies that nature is deliberate evil; in fact, nature is merely amoral, as innocent as that “infant crying in the night.”

It’s interesting that Czeslaw Milosz, known for poems praising the beauty of nature, was not in fact all that far from from Tennyson’s position. He writes,

Amost every day, Public Television airs nature programs, mainly for young people. About spiders, fish, lizards, coyotes, animals of the desert or of alpine meadow, and so on. The technical excellence of the photography doesn’t prevent me from considering these programs obscene. Because what they show offends our human, moral understanding – not only offends it, but subverts it, for the thesis of these programs is: You see, that’s how it is in Nature; therefore, it is natural; and we, too, are a part of Nature, we belong to the evolutionary chain, we have to accept the world as it is.

If I turn off the television, horrified, disgusted by the images of mutual indifferent devouring, and also by the mind of the man who filmed it, is it because I am capable of picturing what this looks like when translated into the life of human society?

. . . The makers of those films have a scientific outlook and show the truth, nothing but the truth; furthermore, they appreciate the splendid photogeneity of nature.

. . . Is hunting and devouring each other the very essence of Nature? It is, that is why I dislike Nature.

~ A Year of the Hunter, pp 48-50 (1994; emphasis mine)

But, as usual, Milosz shows that he has two souls. The prose quoted above was written by his more elevated, Catholic soul. But his cat-loving pagan soul wrote this charming defense of nature:

To Mrs. Professor in Defense Of My Cat's Honor And Not Only

My valiant helper, a small-sized tiger 
Sleeps sweetly on my desk, by the computer, 
Unaware that you insult his tribe. 

Cats play with a mouse or with a half-dead mole. 
You are wrong, though: it's not out of cruelty. 
They simply like a thing that moves. 

For, after all, we know that only consciousness 
Can for a moment move into the Other, 
Empathize with the pain and panic of a mouse. 

And such as cats are, all of Nature is. 
Indifferent, alas, to the good and the evil. 
Quite a problem for us, I am afraid. 

Natural history has its museums, 
But why should our children learn about monsters, 
An earth of snakes and reptiles for millions of years? 

Nature devouring, nature devoured, 
Butchery day and night smoking with blood. 
And who created it? Was it the good Lord? 

Yes, undoubtedly, they are innocent, 
Spiders, mantises, sharks, pythons. 
We are the only ones who say: cruelty. 

Our consciousness and our conscience 
Alone in the pale anthill of galaxies 
Put their hope in a humane God. 

Who cannot but feel and think, 
Who is kindred to us by his warmth and movement, 
For we are, as he told us, similar to Him. 

Yet if it is so, the He takes pity 
On every mauled mouse, every wounded bird. 
Then the universe for him is like a Crucifixion. 

Such is the outcome of your attack on the cat: 
A theological, Augustinian grimace, 
Which makes difficult our walking on this earth.


~ Czeslaw Milosz, Facing the River (1995)

**

Here Milosz acknowledges the innocence of nature. Only humans mistakenly say: cruelty, and imagine the kind of deity who cares for every mouse and bird. Yet if this is so, “then the universe for him is like a Crucifixion,” Milosz brilliantly observes. This position – that nature is “cruel” – only makes our life more difficult. Much as he would like to believe in a totally caring god, Milosz will not condemn his beloved cat. The cat is as innocent as Frida Kahlo's dog, Señor Xólotl "curled . . . on the wrist of evening." 

But wait! The human psyche and human values cannot be so easily dismissed. We are the ones capable of pity for all suffering – and of remembering the beings, human and animal and vegetal, who are no more. Lois P. Jones sent me this beautiful French poem by Rilke:

WHAT SURVIVES 

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.

It isn’t the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor – from breast to knees –
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. A. Poulin 

***


Michael (at Mile 410 of the Pacific Crest Trail)

I enjoyed wrestling with the thoughts in your most recent post.

A great injustice, an unfortunate thoughtlessness, is the inappropriate use – the gross use – of and in humans and nature – there is no and, humans are nature. We are as much nature as any other creature (and gasp! we haven't even begun talking about the so-called inanimate...). The AND in Human and nature has lead to a world of fear and division and disregard and power-over.

One such consequence is the world as an animal Auschwitz – 58 billion land animals senselessly killed each year for food, worldwide. The creatures taken from the sea are many, many more. I saw a butcher buying goats in NW China. He lead them to his cart, grabbed them by the skin on the back, and hurled each over the 6' side of the cart and let each drop on its back, on the floor. For him, the goat was apart from him. He believed in the AND. Nature is to be controlled. Disregarded. Killed. Not worthy of respect, nor is there reason to be concerned for its suffering.

Last week I was a hiking a few miles south of The Devil's Punchbowl on the PCT and rounded a corner and nearly bumped into two young men. From their clothing I guessed they were on their first day-hike, venturing into the wilds with only Hollywood as a guide. The meeting was sudden, neither of us had heard the other coming. One of them said, "Damn, I thought you were a bear." A bear. Right. But he was serious and to support his concern, he held a handgun, a version of the famed 1911 pistol, hammer back. I wanted to laugh and at the same time slap him silly for being so naive and stupid and for endangering my life and those of others hikers. He believed in the AND.

In a general way it might be said there are two kinds of Pacific Crest Trail hikers: First, those who believe nature is a force to reckon with, to be wary of, and they plan for her volatile ways – these folks carry gear for every contingency – one, two, or even three first aid kits, a satellite phone or tracking device, GPS, maps for several miles in every possible direction, food for an extra day or two, a back-up water filter, too much clothing, snow shoes (in spring and summer?), a shovel, etc. They believe in the AND. The second kind believes nature is benevolent and they pack lightly. These are the ultra-light backpackers. They may carry an extra pair of socks. That's it. Enough food for the miles, no back-up gear. These hikers are nature.

It's the view. Of nature. That allows for these different approaches.

Not far from where I live in San Diego someone has scratched into the concrete sidewalk: WE ARE ONE WITH EVERYTHING! Yes, we are. And the walk we must learn to walk is the one without the AND.

I hear the reasoning of the deep ecologists in your discussion--deep ecologists acknowledge the interconnected of systems, but have little concern for the individual. So the earth didn't pause its ponderous revolution when I was born, nor will it pause when I die. But what would happen if humans ceased to exist? If the oceans died? Or the polar ice caps melt? 

Oriana:

The ice caps are already melting, of course. Humans who run the world (presidents, generals, CEO's) seem like a bunch of young male teenagers. The gang mentality. The adolescent belief that we are “separate, different, and superior.” Why are we superior? Because we have morality, while nature, we were taught, is “red in tooth and claw.”

And anyway, by the time the polar caps are totally melted, that will posterity’s problem, and who really cares for posterity? It’s been observed that some people never use the future tense. 

Even having children and grandchildren does not necessarily make them care. I remember having chatted with a real-estate developer. He said he was working on “developing” the hills around San Luis Obispo. “Not those hills!” I moaned. “That’s such a beautiful area.” “I know,” he replied. I used to hike there when I was in college.” “And where will your children hike?” I asked. At first he pretended not to hear. Then he said, “People need housing,” and became busy working on his laptop.

After all, most agree that profit is more important than nature.

You are correct in your argument that people don’t seem to realize that they ARE nature. Hence either the romanticized, deified version of Nature, or the degraded rape-her-while-you-can nature. But Milosz has gotten himself into a different conundrum. He is disgusted by the food chain: all this devouring. He wants a divine order where maybe we can just feed on light. This reminds me of Linda Pastan’s wonderful poem:

The Imperfect Paradise 

If God had stopped work after the fifth day

With Eden full of vegetables and fruits,

If oak and lilac held exclusive sway

Over a kingdom made of stems and roots,

If landscape were the genius of creation

And neither man nor serpent played a role

And God must look to wind for lamentation

And not to picture postcards of the soul,

Would he have rested on his bank of cloud,

With nothing in the universe to lose,

Or would he hunger for a human crowd?

Which would a wise and just creator choose:

The green hosannas of a budding leaf

Or the strict contract between love and grief?

~ Linda Pastan

Nevertheless, Milosz is sane enough not to call nature “cruel.” After having witnessed a huge amount of human cruelty, he knows very well that it’s not his cat that is cruel. And he realizes that not even the God of Love (as opposed to Blakean “Nobodaddy”) could open up to all suffering, because then the universe would be a constant crucifixion. And even God wants to be happy! So, in midst of sorrow, we must choose to live in joy. Only a basically joyful person, I suspect, can be emotionally strong enough to try to actively minimize suffering and environmental destruction. 


But what I particularly fear is people who don’t seem to have any sense of the sacred or, what may be equivalent, a sense of beauty. 

Scott:


Where DO you find those pictures?! The clarity of the images for your posts are really striking. I really liked the Chinese fisherman with his cormorants, saw one of those birds just this weekend on the coast of Georgia. The Chinese fisherman image on your post brought to mind, oddly enough, the thought of the Quakers and their being known as
Children of the Light; Lowell's 'Quaker Graveyard on Nantucket' comes to mind as well. 

Which that leads to Melville(Lowell as you probably know makes many allusions to 'Moby Dick'). Melville was haunted by Calvinism most of his life. Like Milosz he never fully escaped his upbringing though at the end of his life he seemed to have acquired some peace.

Oriana:


For images, I scour the Internet. The best images are often not attributed, to my astonishment. But maybe it’s better that way, in line with Internet generosity.

That's a wonderful comparison of Melville's Calvinism to Milosz's old-time Catholicism. Either way, it's not a lovable deity. I think Milosz had at least some moments of peace – several late poems indicate that. He felt that at least in his old age he’d be accepted “as is” – but certainly without any apologies for the huge amount of suffering he had to witness or experience, for the silence when he prayed that the suffering of others be relieved. I think Milosz arrived at moments of blissful acceptance and moments of agonized acceptance.