All of this reading makes me realize how much I've missed writing. During my senior year as an undergrad, I wrote weekly for the school paper. That was fun. I want to write again, but not for a school paper. I'd like to write to a general audience, maybe letters to the editor for newspapers, magazines, and to no one in particular (i.e. this blog). I want to keep writing to keep up the sense of wonder that I feel everyday, in my work, in my interactions with people, and in the world around me.
And I have conflicting goals, not only in who I want to write to, but what I want to write about. I love writing about the Earth as a whole (e.g. the Pale Blue Dot). But I also want to write about the myriad of human struggles, dramas, triumphs, and the infinite complexity and unobserved beauty of water, air, land, and life that is constantly and amazingly chugging along, day by day and second by second on this planet. What I really want to be able to do is write about my daily experience, here in Ithaca, or Cleveland, or wherever I may be, and weave in my personal interpretations of my activities and what I see with the global perspective that refreshes and grounds me.
An article in the most recent Orion magazine (Hope and Feathers, by J. Drew Lanham, Jan/Feb 2011) concludes with a wonderful reflection on an ornithologist's trip to Africa, and the birds, land, people, and struggles that he observed:
The dramatic landscapes awed me at times to tears. I absorbed a modest 126 life birds, watching each new entry to understand it not as just a tick mark but as an organism within the context of the place. But my eyes were also opened to the poverty, the nasty racism still writhing beneath the new democracy, the long trek ahead for the new nation. And although I saw only a fraction of what the nation has to offer, it was enough to help me better understand my connections to nature and humanity, and to realize that the two are not as separate as I'd once though.That last line especially is something that I want to experience everywhere I go, with every person I meet, every community I get to be a part of, every landscape I see, every meal I get to eat, and every cloud, bird, star, body of water, and plant I encounter.
I want to combine scientific conclusions:
Prediction of future changes due to emission changes and climate initiated atmospheric changes (temperatures, dynamics, humidity biospheric response), can only be made if we have a reasonable understanding of past and present conditions. We need to know the non-linear responses in composition from emission changes caused by human activities, and the behaviour of the chemical active greenhouse gases (CH4, O3, particles). Such knowledge helps us distinguish natural variability from human-induced changes. (Isaksen et al. (2009), Atmospheric Environment, 43)with editorials:
Fortunately, it has never been easier to find examples of people and organizations that are working fort the kind of changes our culture so badly needs...The burgeoning fields of local economics and local currency, community transition, permaculture, corporate responsibility, alternative health, alternative energy and clean technology, local energy, social and economic justice, sustainable cities, alternative housing, efficient building practices and ecological design, alternative public transportation, climate action, regional agriculture and food systems, and holistic education provide concrete entryways for anyone who is looking to get involved (Orion, January/February, 2011).and inspiring videos:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. (Carl Sagan, The Pale Blue Dot)and religious writing:
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do...Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. (Ecclesiastes 9, 7-10)and philosophy:
We are up against mystery. To call this mystery "randomness" or "change" or "fluke" is to take charge of it on behalf of those who do not respect pattern. To call the unknown "random" is to plant the flag by which to colonize and exploit the unknown...To call the unknown by its right name, "mystery," is to suggest that we had better respect the possibility of a larger, unseen pattern that can be damaged or destroyed, and with it, the smaller patterns...If we are up against mystery, then we dare act only on the most modest assumptions (Vitek and Jackson, Virtues of Ignorance, Ch. 1, Toward an Ignorance-Based World View, 2005).and fiction:
Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of. (both from Anathem, Neal Stephenson)
And I want to do this every day.
