I meant to write something here for Earth day updating everyone about the quilt, but time seems to be escaping my life continuously. These last few weeks, I’ve been spending time with several peoples’ uncontainable grief, breaking-- again-- my heart which was already always broken. I have been reading and thinking about grief... and loving. The way we love even though we know that everything dies.
Meanwhile it is Spring in California and everything is very much alive. All morning we’ve been watching a pair of tiny wrens bring straw from the garden into their birdhouse one piece at a time. The house finches have laid four blueish eggs in their nest over the kitchen window. The farm is covered with roses and irises and the bees are out in the warm air working at their continuous gathering. We’ve had an unusually rainy year this year, so all the wildflowers are banks of color on the hills. It is beautiful.
And my mind wanders. Because it is also Spring in the Gulf of Mexico. The brown pelicans have been building their nests in the wetlands of Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi. Five species of sea turtle are finishing their journey to sandy shores where they, too, will lay their precious eggs. Blue fin tuna are returning from the open ocean to spawn in the warm waters where the Mississippi river empties her giant body into the gulf. Songbirds- orioles, warblers, swallows-- are at the peak of their migration North over the blue circle of the Gulf on exhausted wings, waiting to reach land again. Spring brings new life. Fragile life. Everywhere.
This oil spill will wash up on the new life of nearly everything: grasses, sedges, birds, fish, people. The broken rig that continues to spill hundreds of thousand of gallons of crude oil into the gulf shows no sign of stopping-- or being contained. News outlets warn of the worst environmental disaster in the US in recent history. Recent must mean in the last few weeks, because these exact coastal communities and ecosystems were shattered by Katrina five years ago. And last month 31 miners were killed in Appalachian mines, a tiny fraction of the devastation caused by mining practices that have endangered local communities, filled in thousands of miles of streams and destroyed more than 450 mountains-- another area the size of Delaware. That seems like a pretty huge environmental disaster to me. Who gets to say which area the size of Delaware is bigger, land or sea?
The news measures time and size in peculiar ways. My friend Sarah who works as an eco chaplain in Appalachia, recently wrote about the cumulative loss of human life and health over time in her mountains-- how it far outstrips the death toll of miners last month. I remember my shock, cleaning up the Cosco-Busan spill in San Francisco Bay, at lifting, not oiled birds, but the stiff bodies of raccoons out of the grass and mud of the Berkeley Marina. They had come down to feast on small contaminated fish washed up on the shore. Like sludge from mines and all toxins, oil moves up the food chain, concentrating itself in larger animals. But we never see cancer declared an environmental disaster.
Appalachia and the Gulf Coast have a lot in common. They contain our poorest and sickest communities in the US, the roots of our deepest music, some of the greatest biodiversity we have, and they are continually being decimated by our collective inability to change our lifestyle.
This is not special calculus. It explains itself.
You can see it with your eyes, reach out and touch it. Except we don’t. Its definitely easier not to. In my reading about grief, denial is the first stage. The one that allows us to continue living, just barely, doing what has to be done. It keeps us from really feeling and so it is useful temporarily, but dangerous in the long term. Adam swam in the Gulf of Mexico every summer of his life, on the beaches of Florida that are now state emergencies. He’s been reading me the news this week, full of names he knows, full of sadness. And I haven’t listened. Not really. Numbness has come, tinged with helplessness, blame, denial. But nothing else. Until this morning. We found two tiny unhatched eggs in an old nest and I thought, suddenly, of Hawksbill sea turtles, a species I love. How their eggs each contain something precious, one more body to add (the way we do with endangered species) to the life count: the ones still left. And I thought of Joanna Macy's Bestiary, which includes the Hawksbill. In grief, it is small details that move us out of denial: particular names, colors, what was heard, remembered. In the presence of these, denial breaks down into everything else: anger, despair, fear, sadness, breath, and, eventually, resilience.
The details are so important. To remember is not the opposite of to forget. It is the opposite of to dis-member. The opposite of undoing our membership in life. The opposite of not seeing, not touching the particulars of everything. I’ve heard a lot of people cursing our government, the conscience-less corporations, the people who created this disaster. I myself have spent all week responding to Adam’s memories with educated venom and statistics. But this morning I remembered one name. I started to remember myself, and the tears came, and the real anger came, and words came, and movement. Here are some names to re-member that we can see and touch, can go on living with a broken heart. They begin to move beneath the news, the measurements, to the heart of everything: our life and resilience; our ability, when we are present in our senses, to respond.
The names*:
Hawksbill Turtle
Brown Pelican
Alligator Gar
Tripletail
Tilefish
Green Sea Turtle
Schoolmaster
Blackfin Snapper
Red Snapper
Cubera Snapper
Ballyhoo
Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle
Blue Angelfish
Queen Angelfish
Sqirrelfish
Black Driftfish
Sailfish
Mako-Shortfin Shark
Mako-Longfin Shark
Human
Skipjack Tuna
Leatherback Sea Turtle
Loggerhead Sea Turtle
Seaside Sparrow
Clapper Rail
Mottled Duck
Bermuda Chub
Hogfish
Scrawled Cowfish
Smooth Puffer
Pinfish
Spot
Escolar
Grey Snapper
Dog Snapper
Ibis
migrating songbird families:
Warblers
Orioles
Buntings
Flycatchers
Swallows
Mahogany Snapper
Lane Snapper
Silk Snapper
Blue Marlin
Sand Tilefish
Manta
Tarpon
Southern Kingfish
Gulf Kingfish
Atlantic Croaker
Planehead Filefish
Striped Bass
Royal Tern
Sandwich Tern
Least Tern
Striped Mullet
White Mullet
Black Grouper
Yellow Mouth Grouper
Gag Grouper
Scamp Grouper
Comb Grouper
Tiger Grouper
Yellowfin Grouper
Pilotfish
Lemon Shark
Spiney Cheek Scorpionfish
Yellowtail Snapper
Leatherjack
Atlantic Thread Herring
Gulf Toadfish
Pigfish
Red Porgy
Gulf Flounder
Southern Flounder
Broad Flounder
Spinner Dolphin (Long-snouted)
Striped Dolphin
Creole Fish
Black Drum
French Angelfish
Bluefish
Bigeye
Blue Whale
Bottlenose Dolphin
Clymene Dolphin
Fin Whale
Bighead Sea Robin
Smalltooth Sawfish
Largetooth Sawfish
Laughing Gull
Reddish Egret
Rosegate Spoonbill
Wenchmen
Jack Crevalle
Bar Jack
Horseeye Kack
Spinner Shark
Silky Shark
Bull Shark
Blacktip Shark
Oceanic Whitetip Shark
Dusky Shark
Carribbean Reef Shark
Sandbar Shark
White Shark
Yellow Rail
Black Rail
Snowy Plover
Piping Plover
Wilson’s Plover
American Oystercatcher
Swordspine Snook
Fat Snook
Tarpon Snook
Commen Snook
Bank Sea Bass
Rock Sea Bass
Black Sea Bass
Sowerby's Beaked Whale
Sperm Whale
Atlantic Spadefish
Melon-headed Whale
Striped Burrfish
Bay Wiff
Sand Seatrout
Spotted Seatrout
Siver Seatrout
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin
Blainville's Beaked Whale
Fraser's Dolphin
Gervais' Beaked Whale
Risso's Dolphin
Rough-toothed Dolphin
Sei Whale
Short-finned Pilot Whale
West Indian Manatee
Southern Stingray
Atlantic Stindray
Bluntnose Stingray
Black Crowned Night Heron
White Ibis
Black Skimmer
Frigate Bird
Round Scad
Redtail Scad
Humpback Whale
Killer Whale
Minke Whale
Irish Pompano
Porcupine Fish
Sand Perch
Wahoo
Atlantic Sturgeon
Mountain Mullet
Bonefish
African Pompano
Cuvier's Beaked Whale
Dwarf Sperm Whale
False Killer Whale
Thresher Shark
Alabama Shad
Bay Anchovy
America Eel
Northern Right Whale
Pantropical Spotted Dolphin
Bryde's Whale
Pygmy Sperm Whale
Red Head Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Snowy Egret
Dunlin
Black Margate
Porkfish
Sheepshead
Cory’s Shearwater
Pygmy Killer Whale
Northern Gannet
Neotropic Cormorant
Seabream
Hardhead Catfish
Bullet Mackerel
Frigate Mackerel
Golden Crab
Double-crested Cormorant
Anhinga
Masked Booby
Eastern Oyster
Gafftopsail Catfish
Silver Perch
Grey Tigerfish
Queen Menhaden
Bearded Brotula
Longbilled Dowitcher
Western Sandpiper
Lightning Whelk
Blue Crab
Stone Crab
Fiddler Crab
American Alligator
Caspian Tern
Gull Billed Tern
American Woodcock
Grass Porgy
Jothead Porgy
Saucer-eye Porgy
Whitebone Porgy
Knobbed Porgy
Ocean Tigerfish
Yellow Jack
Atlantic Oyster
Apalachicola Oyster
Kumamoto Oyster
American Cupped Oyster
Breton Sound Oyster
Blue Runner
Spotted Pinfish
Fat Sleeper
Sharksucker
Rainbow Runner
Ladyfish
Rock Hind
Pomarine Jaeger
Boat-tailed Grackle
Virginia Rail
Graysby
Speckled Hind
Yellowedge Grouper
Coney
Red Hind
White Shrimp
Brown Shrimp
Pink Shrimp
Glossy Ibis
Yellow-nosed Albatross
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel
Marbled Grouper
Goliath Grouper
Red Grouper
Misty Grouper
Warsaw Grouper
Snowy Grouper
Nassau Grouper
Queen Snapper
Silver Jenny
Little Tunny
Gulf Killfish
Tiger Shark
Yellowfin Mojarra
Nurse Shark
Green Moray Eel
Spotted Moray Eel
Blue Striped Grunt
Tomtate
French Grunt
White Grunt
Pudding Wife
Scaled Sardine
Bluntnose Jack
Cobia
Clearnose Skate
Roundel Skate
Remora
Atlantic Sharpnose Shark
Vermillion Snapper
Oilfish
Atlantic Bonita
Spanish Sardine
Blue Parrotfish
Rainbow Parrotfish
Queen Parrotfish
Red Drum
Chub Mackerel
Kind Mackerel
Spanish Mackerel
Cero
Spotted Scorpionfish
Bigeye Scad
Lookdown
Greater Amberjack
Lesser Amberjack
Almaco Jack
Banded Rudderfish
Southern Puffer
Guaguanche
Southern Sennet
Scalloped Hammerhead Shark
Great Hammerhead Shark
Bonnethead Shark
Great Barracuda
Atlantic Needlefish
White Marlin
Blackcheek tonguefish
Longbill Spearfish
Inshore Lizardfish
Albacore Tuna
Yellowfin Tuna
Blackfin Tuna
Bigeye Tuna
Florida Pompano
Permit
Palometa
Swordfish
Atlantic Cutlassfish
Houndfish
* this list is not exhaustive, and includes no plants, algae, fungi, sponges or coral
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