“as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the
journey” is the opening line of Gareth Evan’s poem that opens John Berger’s
vital book Hold Everything Dear.
My head changed the words to rose heat for the journey, a small change, really, just one letter
more and a bit of reshuffling, and there we are. I think of this when I see
leaves soaking in sunlight, when I see logging trucks on my New England
highways, when I put wood into fires, when I absorb and absorb and absorb the
particular golden light of sunset, when I try to hold onto fierce peace of wild
things, when I reach down within the best of myself to do good work in the
world, to stretch my hands out like tree branches and become awake and aware
and alive in the world.
The certain knowledge that people who live in the same
neighborhoods as me, who shop at the same grocery stores, walk the same streets
and pause to look up at the same shrieking seagulls and sunlight on the
water…that these nearby strangers are having their doors knocked on by the
government, that the phrase “show me your papers” isn’t reserved for Nazis in
movies anymore, all of this is calling up on all the wells of rose heat I’ve
ever stored for any journey. It’s stored up and spilling over—and some days
starting to leach away—because I do not know the right outlet for all the love
and concern I feel for all this beautiful world.
A student told me the other day that he had been seeing a
lot of bald eagles around the college. Maybe, he said, it’s just the same one
over and over again, but it’s still pretty amazing to see. I agreed, took heart
at the wide-eyed wonder of someone even just a decade younger than me, and
thought about how close bald eagles and other birds came to extinction before
DDT was banned, before the EPA was formed, and how much love of the world is in
real danger. When I lived in Montana and was hiking with a friend, a bald eagle
swooped low over our heads and my friend said, sweetly, “Thanks, Rachel
Carson!”—almost the way another set of believers would thank something more
divine than human for the same gift of wonder.
As an environmentalist, as a human, as a Feminist, as a
woman, as an American, as all of the ists and ans that I am, I feel as if I am
trying at once to stand my ground, but that ground is being eroded on all
sides. I know how the system is supposed to work—and I call my Members of
Congress regularly, I attend neighborhood resistance meetings, I work at a
college with a refreshingly honest dedication to sustainability—but I still
feel beset on all sides and cannot help but see that the system is either
broken or atrophied.
At my job, we’ve been discussing the opportunities for
increasing the solar capacity of the college, in pursuit of our goal of carbon
neutrality. The trouble—aside from the particulars of finding appropriate roof
space or expanding a ground array—is that power storage technology is not yet
advanced enough to meet what can be produced. On top of the storage, there is
an inherent transmission loss of about 5% between production and use.
These all the same problems of storing and carrying rose
heat for the journey.
I am at a loss for how to transmit my love and fear into
power and change. The infrastructure of democracy seems in disrepair or decay
or simply unable to handle the loads we require of it. We must reawaken it even
as we seek to rebuild it, put new and different flesh on its bones. As much as
I want to stand and speak and write and vote and donate and do all that I feel
called to in the service of what I love and long to protect, I feel sometimes
like I’m standing on the seashore and the tide is dragging the sand out from
under my feet.
The truth with that, though, is if you stand long enough the
sand holds your feet and ankles fast. And the tide always returns.
This is when it starts to get hard. The first month of
euphoric disbelief and galvanized activism for a just America, that was a
special time. Now, nearly two months into the buffeting winds of Muslim bans
and abhorrent Cabinet picks and healthcare evaporating for our elders and empty
promises of jobs and undeniable ties to a notably violent regime and the
re-normalizing and re-institutionalizing of racism that had almost started to
poke out into the sunlight and be rectified…now is when the journey really
begins. And we must carry our rose heat forward in whatever forms and vessels
we each can. It may be pussy hats, it may be daily calls to Members of
Congress, it may be entering local politics, it may be opening up our spare
rooms as safe havens, it may be increased mindfulness and a falling in love
anew with the world so that we recall the value of what we protect, it may be
and must be whatever each person has time for, now that the blush and fury of
the first romance with activism has worn off with time, and the recognition of
how much work this truly entails.
We are all vessels of power.
