the stoics always said
“live according to nature.” they didn’t mean reduce, reuse, recycle; no, they thought “man is the rational animal,” ergo living according to nature = living according to reason for human beings. hmm. this raises the question: if it’s so natural, why do we have to be told? how come we don’t just use our noggins from the moment they form? how come we seem to use our reason to destroy the very nature of which we form a part? uh . . . well . . . & while we’re at it: how come nature doesn’t act more rationally, tell me that. one minute, a heat wave in siberia, the next, a flood in the desert! w.t.f.?? if only all transpired rationally, predictably, in heroic couplets. instead, what do we get? water rises up to the bumpers in scotland; in somalia & karachi, there aren’t many cars, but there’s water up to the waist; inundations still sluicing, roiling, spreading in both koreas, s. china, yemen, sudan heatwaves in britain! “if the whole world warms, the u.k. warms. if the summer warms, heatwaves warm,” sez the entirely reasonable climate researcher the stoics also mistrusted & steeled themselves against the power of chance (fortune) to bestow blows or windfalls & that’s just what it does: wind blows trees down in nebraska, iowa, wisc.: one storm “impacted, destroyed or severely damaged” 10s of millions of bushels of corn; another fells a factory in fujian; o fortuna! . . . egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem -- collapses glaciers; collapses salmon stocks in alaska, oysters in florida, cod stocks in n. sea; or dries up wetlands, which catch on fire for 222.4k acres in argentina, where they’re wearing masks for smoke, not germs & have you heard of “cat bonds”? (cat short for “catastrophe”) buyers bet on mellow weather, sellers on disasters — they keep the principal if everything goes to hell hottest summer in phoenix fieriest summer in siberia fires near chernobyl releasing radioneuclides first grinds you down then heals you -- a mind-game . . . though something sets it all in motion, something mental something mind unmindful using perceptions, with intent & thinking thinking thinking
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |