GREEN IMPERIALISM

12. GREEN IMPERIALISM (or the death of good intentions):

‘Green Imperialism’ – it’s a colonial enterprise wherein people are under the authority of a biology professor who has been given absolute power over their lives and did you know that actually the very word ‘nature’ doesn’t exist in Malagasy a fact which shows what is to be the conceit involved by western man’s attempt at achieving perfection in two important aspects of living : the complete and utter use and destruction of the world and its natural attributes and at the same time the fierce over-achieving ambition to ‘save the globe’ and preserve and force others to preserve the natural environment as first defined by western consumer-man and it’s all a very sickening and maddening endeavor quite nonsensical by very many standards normally in use but that right there is the genesis of every Earth Day faddish factoid you ever see and the hordes my God the hordes come out in rushes to see it but nothing can stop them or make them cease with their ludicrous chatter and the only opportunity to come forth is the one for more and more debate harangue intolerant talk and I can remember how adverse it all gets I can remember the huge meadows by Peapack and Gladstone where we stood together in the high grasses alongside the waterwell and watched the distant horses slowly saunter up and over towards the higher ground with fewer trees as they sought more sunlight we supposed to avoid the growing chill and the surface wind rippled the low grasses and occasional flashes of lightning could be seen away and we took refuge then in the old broken down house or cabin that was nearby and scrawled onto the walls inside there were numerous messages many of them the ‘I love Bob’ variety the ‘Rita and Jim’ stuff with dates and hearts crossed hands and arrows and even the old hippy-style sunburst of exploding colors and then the rain did come as we heard it pattering the top of the roofline as we clutched each other and the thunder around us roared and soon enough the rain started coming in in little rivulets of its own as we made love like mad tyrants alone in some broken and silent kingdom rippled only by the roars of the Gods above us and then the rain passed as we did too and the filtering of new sunlight broke through the old wood and cracked surfaces and the shining brought the meadows back to life and we guessed even the distant animals smiled but that now that all is but a memory but maybe that’s all Nature is anyway and like Love a memory lasts forever or does it and I find myself thinking back forty years to that time and I shudder at the shock of what time does to us and what in turn we try doing to it changing what we cannot but trying anyway so in my way I remain quiet about everything and Gladstone and Peapack too pass from mind - as sure as Jackie Kennedy is dead and all her horses – like something little from the history books and I sit down again in Union Square just to watch and to look over at the trees and the traffic and wonder why wonder why as the clusters of people pass and I listen to what they say but without caring about what I hear and the children’s noises are no worse than dog noises for now I can take them all as I arise to walk 14th and I read the plaque on the old building site ‘On this site stood the original Academy of Music’ and I turn to you still with me and say “back then where exactly was the shoreline along the east-side here by the river was it quite up close this far?” and sure only of what we don’t know we agree it probably was “pretty much just like on the west-side on Spring Street at the Ear Inn where the water was once right at the doorway” but that only shows us how things change how they can be changed how they alter the sum of what we are or how we think of things but anyway we decide “nothing ever is what they really say it is” and we both know that and laugh it off still walking along so anyway what is the ‘Green Imperialism’ which so dominates us and as we think that through we realize it’s nothing but fear fear of insecurity and fear of change which is always there and always happening anyway so what’s to fear but there are those granted who want the world to stop who wish things to remain as they are and it is for them at that moment that gain or loss is measured for they have held hostage to themselves a world of sorry reason and cloistered happiness and where there is no intellectual stimulus or excited experimentation THEN THERE IS NOTHING and the world green or not grows slow so serious and so dull so little left to go on for so little left.