Sylvia Shawcross
I am living out my days in what when was a forested community now a growing suburbia of machines and city sound. It is and was an early model for “sustainable development” in its day however unusually all it brings is the noise of building and construction sites and city sirens and a great deal of truck traffic. As if only the building of sustainability is what is being sustained. For it has been at least a years now of growing sound.
I do not understand if it will end. Maybe when all the green is gone.
It is peaceful only at daybreak and at sunset sometimes. That is usually when the deer would come. Last night the geese were uneasy on the river and you might hear them fussing, honking, chuttling in the water. The water of a river has its own rhythm unlike the sea. I mention the sea since I find it strange now that I spend a lot time remembering it where I was partially grown.
Maybe it is since no matter the noise of civilization, the sea had its own command requiring all your senses. At the rocky shore only the caustic cry of a seagull can overshadow the noise of rocks pitted against rocks rolling in the receding waves. In some cases it seems like the ragged breath of a passing away thing but sometimes it is a place to put your worries and pain– to feel the water drawing away these sad things until they are far away. To that far horizon tenderly yielding to the sky. And when the sadness discovers the sky there, it disperses to memory and you can breathe once again. The world and all its rubbish at your back. It is a location to linger.
It is a soul’s hesitation that discovers the cutting wind that requires you to turn back and face it again– the world. Since it must be done. You are not a stone in the ocean, a seagull in the sky. You are not a sea creature foraging. You are not a point of light where far seas fulfill the sky. Not yet anyway. You are here. You are human.
And whether being the human you are is what you selected or not, at the end it is just what it is. It is likely the option was never yours. We came into being for reasons it might take a lifetime to understand and even then we may not comprehend but the knowing there is reason is what matters. We are not fish in the sea. We are not an accident.
We may pass by but by virtue of our birth we are chosen. To be human. It is the ONE commonness we all understand to be real.
Which indicates we fight like hell to be human. Has the time come yet now to stand in testimony to that?
One would think so.
Or do we simply hand everything away? Forget our due as humans? What good were we anyhow if we should pertain to this desperation to flee our extremely existence into some recommended cold inhuman machine space? But perhaps we do not understand that? It is after all the place we play, work, chat, indulge, discover. It has everything does not it? All the human heart desires. Limitless pledges and novelty and benefit and neighborhood. A click away.
But that is not the world we were given. That is the world we made. It is only pixels in the shadow’s of Plato’s cave. We can have fun with them if we wish, however they are still shadows. And what when was a tool has ended up being the master of our very lives.
What is it then to be human? Often we just know not what we are or what we desire but what we don’t want. A life time of defining what we do not desire makes us what we are for some. And what is it, then as people, that we do not desire? Stand then in opposition to that. In every way. Which involves understanding there is an option. In even the smallest of things.
In the end it is the choice itself we defend.
We do not defend the huge things so much as discover the little things that we challenge until the tributaries satisfy the river that satisfies the sea. And the sea is a force to be reckoned with. It will always win. If we as specific humans comprehend that, we will win.
Unless obviously we’re morons which we most likely are.
Syl Shawcross lives in Canada. Visit her substack. SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
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