Compassion in the Anthropocene
Wax scraps
It may be strange but for as long as I can remember I've felt sorry for melting snow- and for diminishing things in general. In my childhood in Oklahoma, after a snowfall and returning warm weather melting the bulk of it, I would gather up what little snow remained and cram it into the trifold fork of a large old elm tree in the front yard. Protected from sun there, the little triangular patch would survive a few more days into the warmth. I called it my "Tree Glacier" and felt very sad as it dwindled. I used to climb up on the chair I used, to look in the fork to see if any crystals remained. If there were any, I remember covering them up with dark soil to protect them from the heat.
Things like that still emotionally move me. Even today, sixty years after the last tree glacier lost its last crystals in the Oklahoma spring air, here in Oregon I look down at a votive candle on my zendo altar. It is guttering, the wax almost exhausted. I feel pity for the little struggling flame. I reach to where I have some candle wax scraps in a little gray ceramic bowl and select some to sprinkle as near to the flame's wick as i can get them. Hopefully they melt- providing a little more life. (You have to imagine a gray-robed monk, holding the left side of his kesa in the zendo candlelight, bending over a votive, trying to position tiny and sticky wax fragments!) I never can bear seeing a struggling candle die, so when I leave the zendo at the end of the ceremonies, I leave the votive lit, even though all the others have been blown out. That way I won't see it vanish.
I'm that way with many things, both animate and inanimate. Always have been. And now in the fell Anthropocene, I can sense the glaciers on Mt Hood steadily dwindling, as those in the Winds, the north Cascades, the Ruwenzori, the Karakorum, the Stanley’s- all the beloved ices. And so also the forests, the species…it breaks my heart, i can’t save them.
The Anthropocene is a time of heartache. There are not enough wax scraps. But even if there were and enough hands to apply them it wouldnt be enough. The root problem is the candle wick. When it is consumed by the very flames we struggle to keep lit, the light goes out and will not return.
Then the light in the zendo will be that of another votive but it won’t be the one from before..
Michael, I think I told you somewhere in this network that I loved this piece and intended to include it in my Winter essay. I forgot to do so amidst the frenzy of getting the essay out - I had to write nearly all of it in a couple nights after family had been here for several days - and regret that. I'll make a point tonight of leading readers to it. It's beautiful, deep, sweet, and somber. Thank you.
Anthropocene is probably longer that we are willing to admit. It is said that the northern Sahara was a blooming steppe crossed by high-water rivers, full of wild animals: elephants, hippos, wild bulls, gazelles, panthers, lions and bears. Images of these animals, which still decorate the rocks of the Sahara and even Arabia, were made by members of the modern human species Homo sapiens.
The gradual desiccation of the Sahara at the end of the 4th millennium B.C., associated with a shift in the direction of cyclones to the north, led the ancient inhabitants of the Sahara to turn their attention to the swampy Nile valley, where the "ancestors" of wheat and barley grew among the wild grasses on the valley edges. Neolithic tribes mastered farming, and during the Copper Age the ancestors of the Egyptians began the systematic cultivation of land in the Nile floodplain. The process ended with the unification of Egypt under the rule of the pharaohs. This power was based on the huge resources of the already transformed landscape, which did not undergo any fundamental changes afterwards, except, of course, architectural canals, dams, pyramids and temples, which, from our point of view, were anthropogenic landforms.
However, changes on a smaller scale, such as the creation of the famous Fayyum oasis during the XII dynasty, took place until the XXI dynasty, after which Egypt became an arena of foreign invasions. Nubians, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans drew the wealth of Egypt. After two thousand years of anthropogenic influences of the Roman and Arab conquerors, all this rich fauna was replaced by a single camel.
A similar picture can be observed in Mesopotamia, despite a number of physical and geographical differences. The lands formed from the sediments of the Tigris and Euphrates on the edge of the Persian Gulf were fertile, the channels and lagoons abounded with fish and waterfowl, date palms grew wild. But the development of this primitive Eden required hard work. Arable land had to be created by "separating water from land." The bapot had to be drained, the desert irrigated, and the rivers fenced off with dams. These works were done by the ancestors of the Sumerians, who were simple cattle farmers who had no other means of livelihood. These people did not yet know writing, did not build cities, and had no practically substantial class division, but they modified the landscape so thoroughly that succeeding generations benefited from the labors of their hands.
The valley of the Nile and the valley of the Euphrates were transformed again and again, until many Egyptian villages of the Ancient Kingdom era were under the desert sand and the Sumerian and Akkadian villages under the silt. The former pastures west of the Euphrates were already sparkling under the rays of the Baghdad Caliphate because of the salt crystals that covered them. Babylon, the first city in the ancient world, had already been abandoned by the population after twenty centuries of prosperity drawn from local resources.
.