A reflection from economy plus
"I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address
Amen Ursula, whose words and visions have kept me such wonderful company this dark winter. Turning from the dark earth to the light air, where some favorite thoughts come to me… On airplane rides. I don’t know why. I’m not sure what follows rises nearly to favorite status, but whereas I typically do not find motivation to write airplane thoughts down, in this recent instance I did. San Francisco to Boston gives you plenty of time to run out of excuses not to, and in the window seat there’s plenty of imagery for inspiration too. For some reason, thoughts clarify up there at 30,000 feet. The effects of that stale, poorly oxygenated cabin air on the brain? Or maybe just the barely-liminal-but-always-there anxiety that I might suddenly find myself sharing a horrific and prolonged death with a planeload of terrified strangers? Gives a special poignancy to the products of human cognition I guess.
Lives have their own momentum. Objects in motion. First Law stuff I think; I don’t exactly remember. Don’t fly east in December in the northern hemisphere. Its sordid business taking off in the morning and feeling the sun dim behind you in the mid-afternoon with your flight only halfway over. Heavenly bodies in motion, and somehow at our ludicrous scale we can still manage to make them move faster by transporting ourselves from place to place in little dreadful jet planes.
Soft neatly furrowed rows of clouds laid out longitudinally below. Cool pewter with a peach glow faint on the western aspect as the accelerated sunset drifts in our wake. Dark soon light tomorrow. The two-phase power that turns the motor over and over. Dark soon light tomorrow. Dark light dark light. The motor spins at its steady, determinate frequency. Illuminating with shutter and flash the flip book frames of these objects in motion. The lives of the ancestors and animal kin. The blossoming of forests, blooms of algae. Growth of glaciers. Recession. Flames. Shriveled seed husks, barren plains. Wet blood. Dried blood. Dark soon light tomorrow. Click click click click.
We are entering now in our little jet plane that dark half of the cycle that’s more than half for the season and more again for the forward hurtling momentum of our little jet plane. And a little faster and all we have is dark and that two-phase generator shutting down. Click click click click
Anyway, with the new year’s arrival, please find for a moment that transcendent peace, elusive to us but highly accessible to a cat for hours every day.
Subscribe if you like, and leave us a deoxygenated airplane thought on your way out!